(abridged version Bonas Essay) W. van Tijen (1894-1974) Willem van Tijen made a name for himself before World War II with pioneering projects in the field of social housing. His housing complex Bergpolder on Dr. Visserstraat, housing complex Kralingen on Karmelweg-Ramlehstraat Rotterdam (also known as Plaslaanflat) and Flatgebouw Parklaan, all in Rotterdam, are the most striking examples of this, which he designed in collaboration with the leading architects of the Nieuwe Bouw. For the aforementioned projects, for example, he worked with L.C. van der Vlugt, H.A. Maaskant and J.H. van den Broek, respectively. He continued to seek collaborations throughout his career. This requires an explanation, and it is a remarkable one for an architect of his reputation. Van Tijen could not draw. It was impossible for him to get his ideas down on paper by himself The beginning Willem van Tijen was born in 1894 in Wormerveer. Van Tijen attended grammar school and HBS in Hilversum from 1907 to 1914. During his studies he was active in the socialist movement. This came to an end when he was called up for military service during the First World War. Van Tijen managed to get out of this by leaving for the then colony of India. There he worked for two and a half years in a mining company on Sumatra. He did not like the work in the gold mine. He fared better at the irrigation works in central Sumatra. There he worked on a small dam at the foot of Mount Merapi. This period influenced him greatly. But soon the lack of technical knowledge broke him down. To study hydraulic engineering, he returned to the Netherlands. At the Technische Hogeschool in Delft, however, he heard of a project in Badoeng by the Delft professor Klopper. The latter wanted to start a technical college there, specializing in civil engineering. In May 1920, Van Tijen went to India for the second time. On May 5, 1924, he was then thirty years old, he graduated as an irrigation engineer. Because he wanted to start work immediately, he did not attend the graduation ceremony. He had already left for Tjipoenagra where a new dam, the Salam Darma, was being built. There he was executive engineer for the engineering firm Eigen Beheer. In March 1926 disaster struck. Van Tijen contracted polio and had to be hospitalized in Badoeng. After three months in hospital, it was decided to repatriate him. In the Netherlands he moved in with his sister in Bussum. The illness left him with a paralyzed leg. The practice What made him so unique? As a progressive architect, he struggled with the phenomenon of high-rise buildings. Van Tijen had concluded in earlier studies that high-rise buildings were not actually suitable for families with children. He felt that children should have contact with the outdoors. In addition, children playing would cause too much noise pollution. However, high-rise buildings did offer advantages from an urban planning point of view, because they could be used to create accents, especially in neighborhoods where mainly two- to three-story blocks were located. During the 1930s, the firm that Van Tijen had set up with Van den Broek and that he ran with H.A. Maaskant from 1932 continued to grow. Until the bombing of Rotterdam, it was located at Nieuwe Haven 89 in Rotterdam. The war After the May 1940 bombing, much of Rotterdam was lost. Van Tijen and Maaskant were also among the victims; they lost their office and their entire archive. They established their new office in the flat at Kralingse Plas and in Van Tijen's residence. They would exhibit gigantic construction activity after 1945. The main projects during the war years were the construction of emergency stores, repairs to damaged buildings and the Goudsesingel industrial building in Rotterdam. Work was also done on a number of projects that did not go ahead. The most important of these was a series of high-rise flats at Zuidplein in Rotterdam. Presumably the construction did not go ahead because the German occupiers felt that the towers would be in the field of fire. In 1949, one of the flats was still built in a modified form. This was a flat with 500 dwellings that Van Tijen designed together with Maaskant and Jaap Bakema. In addition to these building activities, Van Tijen, together with Brinkman and Van den Broek, began a study called Woonmogelijkheden in the new Rotterdam. They wanted to create a sampling of solutions for rebuilding the city. The result of the research was a book with all the ideas projected onto a piece of the city that might have been available due to the bombing. A competition was also held for Hofplein and Blaak at the beginning of World War II. After the war Immediately after the war, Van Tijen was still trying to combine traditionalist architecture with New Building. Broadly speaking, one could say that his sense of space could be labeled modern and that the materialization was more traditionalist in nature. Bakema would not later disrespectfully call this shake-hand architecture. With Maaskant, he built a gigantic body of work. Of the first postwar years, the high-rise at Zuidplein in Rotterdam is the most startling. It was then the largest residential building in Europe. Van Tijen realized numerous communal facilities there. Besides Maaskant and Bakema, G. Rietveld (facade layout) and Groosman collaborated on the flat. Although Van Tijen was still convinced that high-rise buildings were not suitable for families, he was very pleased with the result. Modern again To solve the gigantic housing shortage after the war, entire neighborhoods were designed. The most modern approach was that of stamping. This is a unit consisting of different housing types in residential strips of different heights. That pattern is repeated over and over again. He actually wanted to make good confections and was confident that that was possible through rationalization. He was also a proponent of the idea of the standard house, which came over from the United States. There, complete sets of drawings with specifications for simple standard houses were sold in department stores for one dollar. Here the idea was translated in Dutch by offering them for sale at licensed construction companies. Together with Maaskant, Van Tijen also developed a standard house. The normal houses sprang up all over the Netherlands. The break In the mid-fifties, Van Tijen was sixty. He decided to slow down and moved to Zandvoort. The most drastic event in those years was the break with Maaskant. After working together for more than twenty years, Van Tijen had come to the conclusion that they no longer complemented but repelled each other. Van Tijen would always hold Maaskant's work in high esteem, although it was too far removed from his austere ideas. Van Tijen continued with a slimmed-down office of five people. For this, he attracted M. Boom and J. Posno. The ideas of Van Tijen's early days were again the starting point. The reborn functionalism gave the office direction. Boom was Van Tijen's right-hand man. The agency's scale did not remain small for long. By 1960, it was almost as large as the office he co-owns with Maaskant. When Van Tijen celebrated his 65th birthday in 1959, he became an advisor to the bureau. SLOT In 1969 Van Tijen was awarded the State Prize for fine art and architecture. He disliked this, and he decided to use the award to create a publication he called "A Closet Tidied Up. It became a publication with reflections on his work and a vision for the future. The end of his life was definitely marked by reflection, evaluation and reorientation. A final correspondence also followed with Granpré Molière. In 1972, Van Tijen received another honor: the Honoris Causa honorary doctorate in technical sciences. Education: HBS and Gymnasium Hilversum/1907-1914;Special Technical College Badoeng/1920-1924 Additional positions: CIAM/member/1945-1959;committee new guidelines elderly housing//;lectureship HBO Amsterdam/teacher/1957-1958;study group efficient housing construction Bouwcentrum Rotterdam//;competition Raadhuis Laren/jurylid/;SHO Amsterdam/teacher/;Stichting architectenresearch Eindhoven//;Royal Institute of Engineers//;committee on high-rise low-rise buildings//;post-doctoral education TH Delft)/teacher/;beauty committee Utrecht//;Stichting ratiobouw Rotterdam//;Bouwbaak//;Study Group Forest/member/1943-1948;Study Group on Housing Architecture/chairman/1943-1955;Stichting Architecten Research (SAR)/advisor/1964-1971;Study Group on Functional Foundations of Housing/member/;Competition Mennonite Church/jury member/1948;Competition De vereniging Bouwkunst en Vriendschap Rotterdam/jury member/1940;Study Competition a learning gantry center in the woods near Doorn/jury member/1942;Competition Artist's house and a club building on a glider airfield/jury member/1939;Federation of professional associations of artists/member working committee/1942;Competition for a building in Morgenstond, The Hague/jurorylid/1952;Multiple commission for a town hall in Laren/jurylid/1961;Competition for a residential-shopping complex in Meppel/jurylid/1967;Competition for a community center in Morgenstond, The Hague/jurylid/1952;Study competitions for architecture and friendship/jurylid/1940-1941 Honors: State Prize for visual arts and architecture/1969;Honorary doctorate honoris causa in technical sciences/1973;Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau/1973 Archives: NAi/TIJX