Leendert van der Vlugt


Leendert Cornelis van der Vlugt was a Dutch architect in Rotterdam. In the architects office Brinkman & Van der Vlugt he was responsible for the architecture of the Van Nelle Factory, a listed monument of the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014.
After the death of the Rotterdam architect Michiel Brinkman in 1925, his son Johannes Brinkman, a constructional engineer, took over the architectural office and made Leendert van der Vlugt co-director. The new practice was called J.A. Brinkman & L.C. van der Vlugt,.

Architect responsible for the Van Nelle Factory

The activities of the Brinkman & Van der Vlugt office lasted only about ten years because Leendert van der Vlugt has died in 1936. Shortly after the death of Jan Duiker in 1935, the Netherlands lost with Leendert van der Vlugt a second young architectural talent. Both architects had created buildings of international rank: the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam by Leendert van der Vlugt and the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum by Jan Duiker.
Since the death of Leendert van der Vlugt, there has been a misleading attribution of his work. In all books of architectural history, credit for the design of his buildings has gone to J.A. Brinkman & L.C. van der Vlugt,. Attributions of this kind suggest that J.A. Brinkman was the creative mind in the practice. Jacob Bakema has dealt with this question in his small book "L.C. van der Vlugt". The fact that Leendert van der Vlugt was the creative architect and not Johannes Brinkman is indicated by the following quotations from Bakema's booklet:
in Rotterdam by Leendert van der Vlugt, 1927-30
To eliminate any misunderstandings about who was responsible for the design work, Leendert van der Vlugt's name should be placed first. The attribution of responsibility for the design of the Van Nelle Factory, for example, could be formulated as follows:
Leendert van der Vlugt of Brinkman & Van der Vlugt Architects; or
Leendert van der Vlugt

Constructivism

The influence of Russian Constructivism is evident in the Van Nelle Factory. From 1926 to 1928, Mart Stam was an assistant in the office and was partly involved in the design of this project. Through his communicative skills and many connections, Mart Stam had made contact with the Russian avant-garde in Berlin in 1922. In 1926, during his first year of work for the Brinkman & Van der Vlugt office, he organized an architectural trip to the Netherlands for the Russian artist El Lissitzky and his wife Sophie Küppers, a collector of contemporary art. They visited the architects Jacobus Oud, Gerrit Rietveld, Cornelis van Eesteren and others. According to Sophie Küppers, Mart Stam told them about "his" factory in the course of the excursion. The influence of Russian Constructivism is evident at different parts of the building: the idea of using large letters on the roofs, for example. The aspect of Constructivism may possibly have come from Mart Stam. On the other hand, the fascinating rounded architectural forms are attributable to Leendert van der Vlugt.

Complications Authorship

The years 1926-28 were full of hectic activity for Mart Stam. In addition to his work for Leendert van der Vlugt, he was occupied with the houses for the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, with a competition for a water tower and with the first steel cantilever chair, not to mention his contacts with his Russian friends and his participation at the first CIAM Congress. In retrospect, one can say that the works dating from this period are among Mart Stam's best. The question arises, whether Leendert van der Vlugt, the more experienced of the two architects, had any hand in the design of the houses in Stuttgart. The great elegance one finds in them is also evident in buildings by Leendert van der Vlugt, but not in the later works of Mart Stam. The question is justified, for in his history of architecture, Kenneth Frampton raised it in a reversed form. A lot of architects and historians have perhaps allowed themselves to be impressed too much by Mart Stam's brilliant perspective drawings. Another question would be why the well-known Dutch Forum Group did not undertake a reappraisal of Leendert van der Vlugt similar to that accorded to Jan Duiker. One explanation might be that the Forum editor, Jacob Bakema, the youngest member of an architectural practice with a long tradition and ongoing development, was not really interested in a reassessment of Leendert van der Vlugt.

Reinstatement of Leendert van der Vlugt

The architectural database archINFORM contains a short biography of Johannes Brinkman, which begins as follows: "Johannes Andreas Brinkman: Dutch architect, who rose to fame with the erection of the Van Nelle tobacco factory in Rotterdam, designed in collaboration with Mart Stam and one of the outstanding industrial buildings of the 20th century..." This is a commonly held view that can be found even on the internet site "Great Buildings Online". It would be a welcome addition for the history of architecture, if the Dutch Architectural Institute NAi in Rotterdam made an official declaration concerning the correct design attribution of the Van Nelle Factory. A further step would be a re-evaluation of Leendert van der Vlugt, which might also lead to an adequate monograph on that architect.
According to Graham Livesey, "the figure of L.C. van der Vlugt remains one of the most overlooked figures of 1920s European architecture."

Buildings (selection)

Leendert van der Vlugt was responsible for the design of all these schemes. The Bergpolder Apartment Building achieved international recognition thanks to Van der Vlugt's personal style. From 1925 onwards, design responsibility can best be formulated as: Leendert van der Vlugt.