The new Paviljoen park in the Hoge Veluwe National Park is located in the vicinity of some of the most important buildings of the 20th century in the Netherlands. The architectural firms Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond have succeeded in designing a building that creates a multi-layered network of relationships with its location: in terms of architectural history, typology and function.
The new Paviljoen park in the Hoge Veluwe National Park is located in the vicinity of some of the most important buildings of the 20th century in the Netherlands. The architectural firms Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond have succeeded in designing a building that creates a multi-layered network of relationships with its location: in terms of architectural history, typology and function.
“Het Landhuis” – the country house: this was the name of the Park Paviljoen, the new visitor center in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in the Netherlands, during the construction phase. And the two architectural firms Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond, who designed the building, were clearly inspired by classic country houses from the first half of the 20th century. Job Floris from Monadnock cites Edwin Lutyens, the grand master of the English country house, and the Dutch architect Frits Eschauzier, who built villas in the homestead style in the 1920s and 1930s, as particular role models.
Floris has already made a name for himself as an architect who deals intensively with classical building typologies with a number of previous works, in particular the highly acclaimed landmark Nieuw Bergen. His architectural language strikes a fine balance between tradition and modernity. Above all, however, he knows the value of the picturesque effect that architecture can have. He thus belongs to a group of Dutch avant-garde architects who are breaking with the maxims of the “Superdutch” generation. They are looking for a way to incorporate architectural history without falling into New Urbanism waters. The result is buildings that breathe a little of the spirit of pre- and early modernism. They seem to have a certain elective affinity with buildings by architects such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage, who was one of the first to seek a way out of the historicist style at the beginning of the 20th century.
The comparison with Berlage can be made directly in the Hogen Veluwe. His monumental hunting lodge St. Hubertus for the Kröller-Müller couple is the actual origin of the national park. It was the prelude to a long series of architectural projects that today make the park one of the most important architectural sites in the country. The industrialist Anton Kröller and his wife, the art collector Helene Kröller-Müller, acquired the 50 square kilometer site in 1909 and had Berlage build their country estate there from 1914.
The couple had previously attempted to build with Peter Behrens and his previous collaborator Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but were dissatisfied with the plans submitted. While Behrens and Mies had planned rooms for Helene Kröller-Müller’s enormous art collection in their villa designs, Henry van de Velde was to build a separate museum for the collection in the park from 1920 onwards. He designed an impressive monumental building, but it never got beyond the foundations. Afterwards, the decline of the Kröller-Müller group prevented further construction.
The park was transferred to a foundation and the collection passed to the state. In the late 1930s, the state finally had a museum building erected, again based on van de Velde’s plans, which was originally only intended as a temporary structure. It still exists today, but was considerably extended by Wim Quist in the 1970s. A pavilion by Gerrit Riedveld was erected in the museum’s sculpture park in 1964. In 1996, MVRDV was allowed to build an entrance pavilion and Quist Wintermans Architects an information center on the park grounds in 1998.
Since 2018, a comprehensive master plan has been underway to adapt the national park to today’s requirements. At the heart of the measures is the Paviljoen park by Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond, whose design won a competition. The jurors recognized a quality in the two firms’ contribution that will allow it to play a part in the architectural ensemble of the Hogen Veluwe National Park in the future – a great honour and a clear indication that the design approach of the two firms, which clearly breaks with the Superdutch modernism that has set the tone for three decades, is highly valued in the Dutch professional world.
The new building replaces the former park restaurant, which had become too small for today’s needs. The post-war building was also unable to cater for larger groups and, with its narrow, low-ceilinged rooms, was unsuitable for a modern restaurant in Paviljoen Park. The information center designed by Quist Wintermans Architects was also suffering from space problems. The popular park store in particular was struggling with its limited space. Both functions were to be taken over by the new building.
Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond designed a curved structure with two elongated, parallel hipped roofs. While the curved outline refers to the information center opposite with its curved façade, the moving roof landscape is an unmistakable reference to the tradition of the Arts and Crafts country house. The architects did not arrange the two roof ridges from a single height, but rather let one tower over the other. This is because the concave side of the building has two storeys, while the convex side only has one.
Under the higher pitched roof, Monadnock and De Zwarte Hond arranged the Park Paviljoen’s service and utility areas on the ground floor, with several conference rooms on the upper floor above. As the upper floor is set back from the base, the conference rooms can be fronted by large outdoor seating areas.
Under the lower of the two pitched roofs, the building surprises with a barrel vault. This design solution was inspired by Gunnar Asplund’s famous chapel on Stockholm’s Skogskyrkogården from 1917, in which Asplund concealed a dome with a lantern under a hipped roof. The elongated, vaulted hall created by the architects incorporates the public areas of Park Paviljoen. Its northern half houses the store, the southern half the restaurant. While a large window on the northern narrow side makes the contours of the vault visible from the outside, the hall in the south ends in a veritable apse with a protruding fireplace in the center. This fireplace with its tiled surround is reminiscent of the characteristic inglenooks of Arts and Crafts country houses, its color and materiality creating a bridge to Berlage’s neighboring St. Hubertus hunting lodge.
The interior of the Park Paviljoen was created in collaboration with interior designer Bart Vos. He designed an interior in which wood is the dominant theme. As with the architecture, an absolutely contemporary design language is mixed with unmistakable references to the tradition of the country house – for example in the wood paneling of the main hall.
The furniture was based on designs by Vos and the designer Piet Hein Eek. They created a range of wooden furniture that evokes associations with a modern lodge, a contemporary hunting lodge. The barrel vault is set off by chandeliers created by the lighting designers from Beersnielsen. The chandeliers project the silhouettes of leaves and branches onto the ceiling, using a programmed algorithm to create the effect of natural sunlight.
In the conference rooms on the upper floor, the interior makes much greater use of color than in the main hall. A fir green, which also appears by the fireplace in the hall, plays the main role here. In the foyer of the upper floor, colored lead glass windows with animal motifs from the foundation’s depot have also been installed. They were originally created for the Berlages hunting lodge, but were not used there. The use of these “spolia” also places the Park Pavilion in the building tradition of the Hogen Veluwe.
Other elements of the pavilion, on the other hand, seek points of reference beyond architectural history. The architects chose the materials for the exterior, for example, with the aim of approximating the sandy terrain in terms of color. Light-colored facing bricks and golden yellow metal cladding in combination with large folded glass surfaces on the first floor take away any monumentality and heaviness from the building. Park Paviljoen is an exciting example of how new approaches to architecture are being considered in the Netherlands. Perhaps this development will have a similar influence in the future as the buildings by OMA, UNStudio or MVRDV. What the work of the new school has in common with their architecture is that it deals intensively with the place where it was created and seeks solutions off the beaten track.
