Spit out and honoured
J.J.P. Oud's Shell building design and rejection
L.M.A. Ubbens (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Phoebus I. Panigyrakis – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / A)
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Abstract
Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud was a Dutch architect who lived from 1890 till 1963. In 1917 he and six other well-known architects, started a magazine ´De Stijl´, a manifest for Dutch Modernism in art and architecture. Five years later, in 1922, Oud withdrew himself from De Stijl, but he continued to design according to the manifest of ‘De Stijl’. Examples are ‘Het Witte Dorp’ (1923) and ‘Café de Unie’ (1924). With the residential district ‘De Kiefhoek’ (1928), he gained national and international fame.
Oud always struggled with the style of Modernism. After a period of strictly designing modern buildings in the 1920s, he experimented with forms that did not relate to the Modern architectural bases. Before and during WWII II, from 1938 until 1942, he built the head office of Shell in The Hague. The building was completed in 1946. His design of this building was poorly received. Most of the Modern architectural critics had no sympathy for this ‘old fashioned’ way of designing. As a result, Oud’s name was removed from all the magazines and his articles were refused in other countries.
This thesis will investigate why the Shell building of J.J.P. Oud was generally rejected by critics. Through thorough investigation in literature and notes of Oud, regarding the design of the Shell building, the explanation of the frame of mind behind the design will be analysed. In addition to the first hand sources, also secondary resources, such as books and articles, will be explored. These secondary resources will give an explanation of the rejection of the critics towards the design of the Shell building.