The Workshop

Organic Design

Present-day architecture is characterised by square angles, flat walls and clear ceilings. The slanted roofs of before are being less and less applied. When one has children around or under four years old, regardless whether they are of Maori, Eskimo, Arab or Western origin, design a house, then there always appears a house with a slanted roof; a square with a triangle on top. This apparently has archetypal character. Modern development has left this behind. That is not good or bad; it simply is a piece of development that corresponds to the present-day consciousness.
A house with square angles and flat walls has its effect upon man. One can feel free in it and think relaxed, for everything around has its place and is in rest.
One step further in development however is when one starts a search again, conscious or subconscious, to the vivid world of formative forces behind physical reality – and there are more and more children being born that are able to observe this life world of playful forces and gestures. In order to meet to this and form a bridge, vivid shapes and gestures can be applied in their spaces, which cause these to be more in motion, and one can be led to the life world. Organic design is a step in this direction. There have been built already beautiful buildings in this style; in Holland for instance the bank building of NMG at Amsterdam, and the Gas Union building at Groningen. If one remembers that we do not onl;y nourish ourselves with food and grows by this, but also with impressions, then you can imagine how important it is with what impressions a growing human nourishes himself. In the younger years one spends most of ones time in a house or a life space, like in a kindergarten, and how this is being shaped, is important for the righteous growth of a child.
The Rune workshop has applied itself to the design of sp[aces in which young children come daily. In the day nurseries of Bartele at Amsterdam South some of the examples to this can be found.

Organic designs:

-Day nurseries; Bartele 1 and 2
-cupboards
-beds
-playground devices
-gardens

In the day nursery Bartele 1 there has been started with the rooms as they initially were (being a barber’s and a grocery shop), which have been adapted to the children. To this aim the corridors have a vault of loam, in natural colours.
In the day nursery Bartele 2 there has been started with the play of forms of the classical elements of fire, air, water and earth.

Bartele 1

In Bartele 1 the entrance hall has a sixangular shape and has a ceiling of loam in blue and green. This encloses the children before they come in.
The big space has a sitting corner with benches and chairs, and a large playing device (playing platform one, hight of the playground 1.60 m), a kind of castle upon which the older children can play under supervision, and close themselves from the group. Underneath of it they can play as well. There have been put large pillows.
To the sanitary room and dormitory there is a portal and a window, of which the rims make the gesture of a mother to a child.

Large room seen out of the sanitary unit.

The corridor as well has a ceiling of loam in the shape of a moving vault (green loam); to the other room it transforms into yellow and white. The walls have been veiled here in yellow and orange-red (by E. Nijeboer). The corridor gives the children an enveloping feeling. They like to play there.

Loam over plaster on iron gauze, metal framework.

First corridor to the 2nd room. Second corridor as seen from the 2nd room.

The wall of the sleeping room has a layer of red loam, to adsorb moisture in the space (loam stabilises moisture).
In the sleeping room stand two types of organic shaped beds; base material is multiplex plywood; type 1 of birch, type 2 of deal.
In the second room the loam on the organically shaped ceiling becomes yellow-white in a gesture towards the kitchen at the back of it. There is a slanted window to look from this room to the corridor and to give light to it.

Arched roof of the second room, portal to the kitchen. Loam over plaster on iron gauze.

The kitchen has a serving hatch to the personnel room behind it, in the shape of an organic gesture.
Children and their parents feel at ease in Bartele 1. It as well has lead to it that there has arisen an active parental group. In the evening the building is used for courses and meetings.

Bartele 2.

This day nursery has been installed in a previous combined shop/living house in the buzy street Rijnstraat in Amsterdam. It has four rooms on the ground level, and a basement, which now is divided into five rooms, being two sleeping rooms for the children, an office room, a storing room, and a room for the personnel. From the ground floor and basement can be entered the garden of 9 x 11 m. At moment there are two groups of children in the building; one nipper playgroup (from 3 – 5 years) and one for babies (up from ½ year).

Bartele 2 as seen from the street side

The rooms at the ground level each have been designed after the four elements, of which the form gestures have been made on the walls and at the ceiling in gypsum and loam, against an iron framework. One enters at first via the hall into the nipper playgroup. Here is a door to the previous shop room, of which now vaults the ceiling over the entire room like a cave with large crystals at places. It is the room of the element earth. In popular speech Bartele 2 is being called the ‘cave crèche’. The showing window is largely in use as a box, with an organic wooden finish to both sides. The stairs leading downwards is surrounded by playful wooden banisters, and partly covered by a platform of 40 cm high.

Cave room; ceiling above the hall and the corridor. Windows to the corridor. Plaster over iron wire net.

Cave room. Ceiling in the middle and above the stairs.

Playing platform, stairs banisters and box in showing window of the cave room.

The organically shaped portal to the room at the back opens up to the sanitary room for the children. The back room, attainable via an oriental passage, gives an entrance to the room that has the form gestures of four colours, which each arise from the air element. In this colourful room stands the playing device, a castle, a bit smaller as in Bartele 1 (play device 2, platform hight 1.20 m), with a playful platform and a stairs before it. There is a washstand and a chest of drawers here to clean up the children. This is predominantly the playing room for the older children, up and underneath of the platform. The walls have been painted here in playfull transitions (by E. Nijeboer).

The colour movements of green through a skin of malve. The colour movement of scarlet red. Gypsum on iron gauze.

The colour movement of magenta (bleuish pink), cobalt blue around yellow respectively.

The corridor along the cave room to the kitchen and the baby group has been shaped in a plying and playful way. Here are the children’s coathooks and can be placed a children car or a bike. The walls at the corridor side are wood (plywood), at the rooms side of plaster (fire prevention), and have windows with playfully slanted and jumping shapes with double safety glass.

Coat hooks for adults (hall) and children (corridor). Walls painted in green veils.

One enters the baby rooms via its back room, where flame movements on walls and ceiling indicate that this is the fire room. In it stands a double cupboard with animals as its holders, that have been interconnected with wooden bows. With tissues on it, this forms a sky or a hut underneath for the children.

Form gestures in loam and plaster of fire movements.

The doors at the backside give access to a enlarged balcony, which in summer is used by the smaller children as their outside. Behind the fence there is a ramp into the garden.

The passage to the front room in the baby group is made into an arch with loam. One enters in the room in which the different organic shapes indicate that one has to deal in it with the element of water; a cloud against a blue sky vault, a tree growing out of the wall, and a castle/like tower, which effects teeth growth in a good way. In this room there is made a stairs to the storage and sleeping room below, with playful organic shapes and openings on its banisters, covered with plexiglass.

Forms in the water room. Loam, plaster and iron wire net.

In the basement the fire preventing walls are made of plywood and plaster, with again playfully jumping slanted windows in doors and walls. The baby sleeping room has windows at the street side. In it stand organically shapes bunk beds (type 2).
The nipper sleeping room at the back of the basement has two windows at the garden side and a half door into the garden. The office, also at the garden side, has overhead lights of glass tiles for daylight out of the baby back room. The personnel department is partly pscirmed off by an arch between the pilaar in the middle and the wall of the baby´s sleeping room. The pipes for electricity, gas and water at the ceiling have been worked away in an organic way mith plaster and iron gauze.
The garden of Bartele has a tiled roundway from the ramp to the balcony onwards. There are tweo walls of wooden sticks (chestnut) and rubber tiles (maximum hight 40 cm), from which the children can drive up and down with their three wheel bikes. In the middle is a six angled sand bassin with stone tiles around it. At the building wall stands a house with a slide, and between the wall and the sand basin are also rubber tiles. Under the balcony is a play house, with dito shapes. Behind this and underneath of the ramp are stocking spaces.