Villa Henny, (Huis ter Heide, Netherlands); 1916-Present; De Stijl/Modernism

East Elevation

After observing Frank Lloyd Wright’s building through paper Robert Van’t Hoff traveled to America, where he visited the Midway Gardens, Taliesin, the Larkin building and the Oak Park home. When he traveled back to Europe he had a new ideology on what future architecture should be. Creating the Villa Henny put him on the map for international fame.  A year after the Villa was completed, he met Theo Van Doesburg. Together they started the De Stijl Magazine writing articles of the future of architecture, along with Jan Wils and Antonio Sant’Elia. Van’t Hoff renounced being an architect and continued as a furniture designer in Hampshire, England in 1937.

Robie House- Frank Lloyd Wright
Inspiration 

The Villa Henny was originally for A. B. Henny, who was a businessman, but before the house was even finished he sold it to another resident. It is hard to classify the house to just one style, since it gets its abstract structure from De Stijl, which we know that Van’t Hoff had a major role in. While the openness of the structure and layout makes it more modern. Van’t Hoff took many of his idea from the prairie style that Frank Lloyd Wright had in his designs. The similarities in grouped masses and strong horizontal lines, along with a central fireplace where very alike. One of the major differences was Van’t Hoff’s use of concrete. The Villa was actually the first residential house to use concrete, which created a freedom for him to shape the awnings and eaves. The same use of color as Frank Lloyd Wright creates a strong sense of horizontality. Wright uses more organic browns and yellows, while Van’t Hoff uses the white of the concrete and a grey. Even though the Villa did not need a strong column structure, the structure began to expose itself in the facade and plan. The windows used very thin pier like columns to space the windows along the whole facade. It is even more noticeable in plan where everything  begin to align to a 10 x 10 grid. The plan was very symmetrical with the fireplace and stairs being the central focus. The patio and pond seemed to be pulled from the same dimensions as the fireplace. Thanks to the stepping terracing and awnings Van’t Hoff is able to play with the lights and shadows of the house.

The ground floor seems to have an orientation of the rooms going north and south, which is more emphasized from the extension of the pond. This floor contains the more public room, such as the kitchen and a living that occupies the full length of the south side. The second floor has a perpendicular symmetry to the first, which is also being emphasized by the east and west pull of the eaves. This floor contains the private areas, such as the bedrooms. In the Norrkoping House, they also had the corners of their house reseed. Van’t Hoff might not have intentionally done this, but in the Norrkoping House having the corners missing created an inviting feel of nature coming into the house and I believe the same thing is being felt with the Villa Henny.  

Plan

Works Cited

Gardinetti, Marcelo. “Robert Van't Hoff, Villa Henny.” TECNNE | Arquitectura y Contextos, Nov. 2012, tecnne.com/arquitectura/robert-vant-hoff-villa-henny/.

Beek, Rene Van. “'Villa Henny' .” Medium, Medium, 30 Nov. 2014, medium.com/@Votoos/villa-henny-e2d1593e8b9c.

“Private House Henny (Huis Ter Heide).” Architectureguide, www.architectureguide.nl/project/list_projects_of_tag/tag_id/15/prj_id/602.

“Robert Van ‘t Hoff: Architect of a New Society.” Robert Van ‘t Hoff Architect of a New Society ARTBOOK | D.A.P. 2010 Catalog nai010 Publishers 9789056627508, 30 Aug. 2010, www.artbook.com/9789056627508.html.

Hoff, Robert van 't, et al. Robert Van 't Hoff, Architect of a New Society. NAi Publishers, 2010.