Jan Buijs

Jan Willem Eduard Buijs, sometimes written Jan Buys (26 August 1889 – 19 October 1961) was a Dutch architect, best known for his De Volharding Building. His works include manufacturing, commercial, residential and municipal buildings. Stylistically, they usually combine New Objectivist and De Stijl features, and in his interiors, a Bauhaus approach.

Life and career

Buijs' parents were Willem Roeland Buijs, an engineer, and Georgina Catherine Antoinette Kuypers. He was born and raised in Surakarta and attended the hogere burgerschool there before moving with his family back to the Netherlands in 1908. In 1909 he entered the Technical College at Delft (now the Delft University of Technology) to study architectural engineering.

After graduating in 1919, he was engaged on the recommendation of Ad van der Steur as assistant architect in the Department of Public Works of the municipality of Haarlem. Among other work of this period is the Stedelijk Gymnasium, the city gymnasium or Latin School (1923–24). He also designed a number of private residences, mostly in The Hague and Wassenaar. In addition to the commercial buildings for which he is known, he continued to design private residences, mostly in The Hague, Wassenaar and Voorschoten. his work included a number of factories, and blocks of flats in The Hague and Vlaardingen. He collected modern art and also had a collection of crystals, which he displayed under carefully planned lighting. he was one of the first in the Netherlands to use Marcel Breuer steel furniture. The building is "unornamented, almost animistic" and uncharacteristic of Buijs.

De Volharding Building, The Hague

Built for a workers' cooperative by that name and designed to house shops, storage for products and a dental clinic as well as offices, the De Volharding (Persistence) Building (1927–28) is De Stijl or cubistic in conception, influenced also by Russian Constructivism, and clad entirely in glass. A light tower rises from the roof above a large sign which bore the name of the cooperative; these are in white, yellow and blue glass, the blue extending downwards to form a divider between the lift tower and the staircase tower, which consist of glass bricks, as does the strip above the ground-floor windows. The remainder of the façade consists of ribbon windows separated by opal glass spandrels, which can be reached from gangways and had lettering mounted behind the glass advertising the benefits of membership. It was "a city-scale luminescent sculpture", However, it was criticised by some in the modern movement for combining expressionist elements and thus not being entirely devoid of ornamentation.

Except for partial illumination of one side in 1966 for the National Week of Architecture in the Netherlands, the building has not been illuminated since a few years after it was built; However, the Amsterdam Beauty Commission objected to the building on stylistic grounds.

C. J. Leembruggen residence, The Hague

This private residence built in 1935–36 is radically Objectivist in external style, with a striking interplay of rectangular forms and voids, a facade clad in yellow and grey glazed tiles, many balconies and a roof terrace, but conventional in interior layout.