Haan designed his house with the oppressive heat and the vastness of the Saharan desert in his mind. He refused to live in "a space that is limited to the few square metres that have to be protected for climatological reasons". The house had a dreamlike position: between the lake and the woods of Kralingseplas and the Ringvaart Canal and its surrounding polders, near to the centre of Rotterdam, but close to the countryside. The maximum volume in order to receive subsidies was only 375 cubic metres, but thanks to the openness of the house it looked much larger, because of the vast surrounding landscape. The huge glass walls could be slid open totally, in order to minimise the distinction between the inside and the outside. The house had no secrets, it was totally open to the street, privacy did not exist for Haan. The higher position of the canal made Haan decide to elevate the living room to obtain a wider view. The large suspended terrace served as a perfect transition between landscape and living room. A small architecture studio was located partly under the living room, directly connected with a covered terrace, a garden and a pond. Studio, living room, kitchen and entrance formed one flowing space, only the bedrooms, bathroom and garage formed a separate unity. The minor rooms were as small as possible. The dimensions of the bedrooms, in particular, were minimal. Haan considered sleeping as a state of unconsciousness. As much space as possible was given to the living rooms of the house. Haan liked to use materials with a radical tactile character: rough wood, scraggy stone, and smooth glass, although always very refined in their application. His architecture was shameless in its expression, but human in its simplicity. Haan's house was an intersection of two main prisms with one connecting element. This simple, uncomplicated composition was the most important concept of the house. One prism was a closed box consisting of a garage, two small sleeping rooms and a minimal bathroom. The other, elevated prism had a totally open view and contained the living room. The connecting element was a one and a half level high atelier, giving access to the half basement under the living room where Haan had his small architecture office. More precisely, the open prism was nothing more than a concrete floor and roof, supported only by one wall and one huge column. There was no enclosed porch or corridors: these were replaced by the large hall with the function of an atelier. This hall was the spine of the house. It was the connection between the rooms on different levels, the entrance and atelier with a panoramic view. The space between the two main volumes opened up a view to a pond, a terrace and the landscape behind, and continued under the elevated living room. The fronts of the house were chosen either as totally closed surfaces, or as glass panels from floor to ceiling. The glass fronts on the south were withdrawn from the roof for reasons of indoor temperature, but this intermediate space also created the possibility of long terraces and of opening the living room to the landscape. The materials used in the house were concrete structures, walls of reused cobblestone, wooden windows, sliding doors of glass and stone pavements. Steel, too, was used for the structure of the building, but in an almost invisible way: the beams were hidden and the columns were round and as thin as possible. This almost invisible use of steel was in strong contrast with the tactile presence of the wood and the stone. The house can be considered as a prototype for his other projects. Much of Haan's oeuvre consisted of private detached houses. The realisation of this project coincided with a rapid acceleration in his career. In the following years he built several villas around Rotterdam, taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm in 1957 and 1958, and joined several Team X meetings. He organised exhibitions and trips to Africa, produced television programs and gave lectures in the whole of Europe. Allison and Peter Smithson visited the house on one of their Team X trips, and called it "their first experience of living in a glass house as a tourist attraction with buses stopping in front". Haan's house was the first of a whole series of houses, all based on the same principle of two or three interlocking volumes, creating one flowing space. The use of materials could also be considered as an experiment for his later houses. The influence of his African travels was clearly recognisable in the way of living, the tactile approach to architecture and the vision of space, though it was not present in the form and the materials. Haan's discoveries in the Sahara were, however, extremely important for younger architects such as Aldo van Eyck and Piet Blom, who did interpret African architecture in a literal way. < BACK
Silvia De Nolf