Time-Specific Glass Transparency

Zonnestraal’s glass transparency was shaped by a complex set of ideals and construction technologies specific to its time, place, and program. The glass appears to eradicate barriers between the sunlight and the interior, symbolizing equality for the union workers and conquering tuberculosis through architecture. In accordance with the ideals of Nieuwe Boutven, Duiker and Bijvoet spiritually freed the structure from excess weight by experimenting with the newest construction techniques, structures, and materials. Only in this narrow time period between the wars in the Netherlands, for a programmatic function with a brief life span, would such a delicate building be sensible. There is a fragile beauty to Duiker’s Zonnestraal, as Peter Smithson described in 1962:

His buildings are just buildings, and when one says that their poetry is slightly mad, it is I think because they have a purity and faith that we find almost too hard to bear, it shines out of the smallest detail, the windows for example at Sonnestraal, and the small white walls round the trees.⁷⁴

Both the expansive, dematerialized windows and the low, white walls transition the building to the landscape, connecting the bedrooms to the trees in the forest.

Henket and De Jonge’s restoration of the glass walls further underscores the differences between the glass transparencies of single-lite drawn glass of the 1920s and contemporary insulated glass units with float glass, the standard of new glass buildings today; the former appears colorless and nearly nonexistent in contrast to today’s coated, tinted, and insulated glass. The available glass technology, means for construction, and expectations for thermal comfort are a few architectural factors that evolve over time and, subsequently, engender culture- and time-specific glass transparency. The creation of an experimental period between the wars, Zonnestraal’s glass is rendered nearly immaterial through Duiker’s objective to economize while healing patients through exposure to light and air. This building serves to comprehend the changing reading of glass over the next eight decades. The following chapters uncover different types of glass transparencies that are shaped by a variety of circumstances.

Notes

1 Bruno Reichlin, “The Original Splendour Regained,” in Paul Meurs and Marie-Thérèse van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal: The History and Restoration of a Modern Monument (Rotterdam: naiOlO, 2011), 239.
2 Paul Overy, Light, Air & Openness: Modern Architecture between the Wars (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 19.
3 John F. Murray, Dean E. Schraufnagel, and Philip C. Hopewell, “Treatment of Tuberculosis. A Historical Perspective,” Annals of the American Thoracic Society 12, no. 12 (December 2015), 1749-1759.

Murray et al., “Treatment of Tuberculosis.”

Margaret Campbell, “What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism,” Medical History 49, no. 4 (2005), 464-470.

Campbell, “What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism," 467. In 1930, Alvar Aalto visited Zonnestraal, which impressed him and influenced his design of Paimio.

Overy, Light, Air & Openness, 22.

Overy, Light, Air & Openness, 14.

Wessel de Jonge and Paul Meurs, “The Zonnestraal Aftercare Colony: Design and Buildings,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 77.

Overy, Light, Air & Openness, 15.

Paul Schecrbart and Bruno Taut, Glass Architecture, by Paul Scheerbart; and Alpine Architecture, by Bruno Taut. Ed. Dennis Sharp (New York: Praeger, 1972).

Hans Maria Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, trans. Wolfgang Jabs and Basil Gilbert (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 31.

Rosemarie Haag Bletter, “Interpretation of Glass Dreams: Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 40, no. 1 (March, 1981), 37—38.

Wessel de Jonge, “‘Zonnestraal’: Restoration of a Transitory Architecture: Concept, Planning and Realisation in the Context of Authenticity,” (Paper presented at Seventh International DOCOMOMO Technology Seminar, Vyborg September -18-19, 2003), 4.

Erik Mattie, Functionalism in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Architecture & Naturas, 1995), 5-27.

Helen Searing, “The Dutch Scene: Black and White and Red All over,” Art Journal 43, no. 2 (Summer, 1983), 170.

Searing, “The Dutch Scene,” 172.

Scaring, “The Dutch Scene,” 170.

Ben Rebel, “The Appearance and Disappearance of the Term Niemve Zakelijkheid in Dutch Modern Architecture,” in Ralf Griittcmeier, Klaus Beekman, and Ben Rebel, Eds., Nene Sachlichkeit and Avant-Garde (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 140.

Mattie, Functionalism in the Netherlands, 13.

Reyer Kras et al.. Het Nieutve Bomven, Amsterdam 1920-1960 (Delft: Delft University Press; Stedelijk Museum, 1983), 8-10.

Hubert-Jan Henket and Wessel de Jonge, “A Restoration Concept for Modem Movement Architecture,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 99.

Wessel de Jonge, restoration architect for Zonnestraal, interview by author, Rotterdam, March 14, 2019.

Jan Molema, “The Zonnestraal Commission,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 62-65.

Robert Vickery, “Bijvoet and Duiker,” Perspecta 13/14 (1971), 133-134.

Annette Koenders, “Centuries-Old Landscape: History of the Design of the Zonnestraal Estate,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 67.

Molema, “The Zonnestraal Commission,” 62-64.

Vickery, “Bijvoet and Duiker,” 130—160.

Herman van Bcrgeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 75.

van Bergeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 75.

De Jonge, “Zonnestraal,” 4.

De Jonge, “Zonnestraal,” 3.

De Jonge, interview, 2019.

Wessel de Jonge, “Nicuwe Bouwen in Practice,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonnestraal, 116.

Dejonge, “Nieuwe Bouwen in Practice,” 112.

Dejonge, “Zonnestraal,” 3.

Dejonge, “Zonncstraal,” 3.

Wessel dejonge, email message to author,July 24, 2019.

Jan Duiker, “Berlage en de ‘NieuweZakelijkheid’,” De 8 en Opbottw 1932, 1, 43—51, cited in Aimee de Back, Sabine Berndscn and Camiel Berns, Eds., Een zeer aangenaant verblijf: het dienstbodenhuis van J Duiker op sanatorium Zonncstraal. A space of their own: the servants’ house by J Duiker at Zonncstraal sanatorium (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1996), 15.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 4.

Vickery, “Bijvoet and Duiker,” 156.

Architectural Forum, 1 (1962), quoted in Robert Vickery, “Bijvoet and Duiker,” 156—157. The original source cited did not contain the attributed quotation.

van Bergeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 73.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 4.

Campbell, “What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism,” 464-467.

Dejonge, “Nieuwe Bouwen in Practice,” 117.

van Bergeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 73.

Dejonge, “Nieuwe Bouwen in Practice,” 110.

van Bergeijk. “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 77.

van Bergeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 74.

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchclls (London: J. Rodker, 1931). Reprint New York: Dover, 1985.

van Bergeijk, “Architecture and ‘Spiritual’ Economy,” 74.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 9.

David Blake, “Windows, Critall and the Modern Movement,” in Hubert Henket and Wessel de Jonge, Eds., Proceedings of the First International DOCOMOMO Conference, Sept. 12-15, 1990 (Eindhoven: DOCOMOMO, 1990), 76.

Blake, “Windows, Critall and the Modern Movement,” 77.

Dejonge, “Zonncstraal,” 5.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 5.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 6.

Fons Asselbergs, “Quality Hurts: Government and Government Agency Policy,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonncstraal, 146. In 1994, the Dutch Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs pledged a subsidy of 7.5 million guilders for Zonncstraal’s restoration.

Docomomo is “a non-profit organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the modern movement.” Henket is now a retired professor and De Jonge a current professor, both in Heritage and Design at the Technical University of Delft.

Dejonge, “Zonncstraal,” 1.

Wessel de Jonge and Hubert-Jan Henket, “The Restoration,” in Meurs and van Thoor, Eds., Sanatorium Zonncstraal, 191.

Dejonge and Henket, “The Restoration,” 191.

R.L. Shute and A.E. Badger, “Effect of Iron Oxide on Melting of Glass,” Journal of the American Ceramic Society 25 (August 1, 1942), 355, https://ccramics-onlineli brary-wiley-com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/doi/abs/10.1111/j.l 151-2916.1942.tbl4318.x. Dejonge and Henket, “The Restoration,” 191.

De Jonge, “Zonncstraal,” 8—9.

71 Dejonge, “Zonnestraal,” 9. PPG is now Vitro Architectural Glass.
72 De Jonge, “Zonnestraal,” 6.
73 Dejonge and Henket, “The Restoration,” 196.
74 Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson, The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 42.