Ed Taverne and Dolf Broekhuizen

J.J.P. Oud's Shell Building
Design and reception

Design: Arlette Brouwers, Illustrated (colour and b/w), Paperback, 168 pages, Format: 23 x 28 cm
Dutch / English edition, ISBN 90-72469-73-9 / 978-90-72469-73-1, € 12.50

In cooperation with the Netherlands Architecture Institute

The Shell Building was an important moment in the career of J.J.P. Oud. After years in which he had barely managed to realize a design, suddenly in 1942 this strikingly classical office building appeared in The Hague - a design that seemed to ignore the conventions of modernism. The symmetrical composition of the building, reinforced by ornament, was seen as a return to the principles of traditional monumental architecture. Many of Oud's colleagues were shocked, and he was accused - especially by critics abroad - of having broken with his own avant-garde roots.

The first part of the book provides a reconstruction of the design process of the Shell Building, using many drawings, photographs, and written sources. The second part describes the reception of the building in architectural publications from the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, and, in particular, the United States, and how Oud reacted to them. In so doing, the book not only offers a comprehensive outline of a main theme of the international postwar debate on architecture; it also makes an essential contribution to a renewed concept of Oud's development.

> Last copies available at NAi Booksellers