When the Dutch Tried to Stay in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen within the Netherlands

Within the many years after the Sec­ond World Warfare, many coun­tries confronted the chal­lenge of rebuild­ing their hous­ing and infra­struc­ture whereas additionally hav­ing to accom­mo­date a fast-arriv­ing child growth. The gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands received extra cre­ative than most, placing mon­ey towards exper­i­males­tal hous­ing tasks begin­ing within the late 9­teen-six­ties. Hop­ing to hap­pen upon the subsequent rev­o­lu­tion­ary type of dwelling, it finish­ed up fund­ing designs that, for probably the most half, strayed none too removed from estab­lished pat­terns. Nonetheless, there have been gen­uine out­liers: by far probably the most dar­ing professional­pos­al got here from artist and sculp­tor Dries Kreijkamp: to construct a complete neigh­bor­hood out of Bol­wonin­gen, or “ball hous­es.”

The thought might recall to mind Buck­min­ster Fuller’s geo­des­ic domes, which loved a level of utopi­an vogue within the 9­teen-six­ties and sev­en­ties. Like Fuller and most oth­er imaginative and prescient­ar­ies, Kreijkamp labored below a cer­tain mono­ma­nia. His needed to do with globes, “probably the most organ­ic and nat­ur­al form pos­si­ble. In any case, spherical­ness is each­the place: we dwell on a globe, and we’re born from a globe. The globe com­bines the most important pos­si­ble vol­ume with the small­est pos­si­ble sur­face space, so that you want min­i­mum mate­r­i­al for it.” The 50 Bol­wonin­gen in-built ‘s‑Hertogenbosch, guess­ter often called Den Bosch, had been fast­ly fab­ri­cat­ed on-site out of glass fiber rein­pressured con­crete. It was­n’t the poly­ester Kreijkamp had at first spec­i­fied, however then, poly­ester would­n’t have final­ed 40 years.

Since they had been put up in 1984, the Bol­wonin­gen have been con­tin­u­ous­ly inhab­it­ed. In the video on the high of the put up, Youtu­ber Tom Scott pays a vis­it to one in all them, whose occu­pant appears rea­son­ably sat­is­fied. (It appears they’re “cozy” within the win­ter­time.)

Like geo­des­ic domes, their spherical partitions make it dif­fi­cult to make use of their the­o­ret­i­cal­ly gen­er­ous inte­ri­or area effi­cient­ly, a minimum of with­out com­mis­sion­ing cus­tom-made fur­ni­ture; leak­ing win­dows are additionally a peren­ni­al prob­lem. Whereas every Bol­received­ing can com­fort­ably home one and even two sim­ple-liv­ing peo­ple, solely probably the most utopia-mind­ed would try to lift a fam­i­ly in one in all them. As with oth­er spherical or cir­cu­lar house designs, expan­sion could be phys­i­cal­ly imprac­ti­cal even when it had been authorized­ly pos­si­ble.

Used as social hous­ing by the native gov­ern­ment, the Bol­wonin­gen now take pleasure in a professional­tect­ed his­toric sta­tus. (As nicely they could, giv­en their con­nec­tion with the artwork and indus­attempt of Dutch glass­blow­ing: it was whereas work­ing in a glass fac­to­ry that Kreijkamp first started professionals­e­ly­tiz­ing for spheres.) And in contrast to most aes­thet­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal hous­ing devel­op­ments, they haven’t gone to seed, however somewhat obtained the nec­es­sary important­te­nance over the many years. The result’s an attraction­ing neigh­bor­hood for these whose existence are swimsuit­ed to its unusu­al struc­tures and its con­tained bucol­ic set­ting, of which you will get an concept in the stroll­ing video tour simply above. By the point Kreijkamp died in 2014, he per­haps felt a cer­tain diploma of remorse that mass-pro­duced glob­u­lar properties did­n’t show to be the subsequent massive factor. However he did dwell to see the emer­gence of the “tiny home” transfer­ment, which ought to retroac­tive­ly undertake him as one in all its lead­ing lights.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Instances of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­males­tary

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den Metropolis Constructed Complete­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

Good­bye to the Nak­a­gin Cap­sule Tow­er, Tokyo’s Strangest and Most Utopi­an Aside­ment Construct­ing

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Inform Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

The Engi­neer­ing of the Strand­beest: How the Magazine­nif­i­cent Mechan­i­cal Crea­tures Have Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly Advanced

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.