AVRO Studios is a building complex and

national heritage site A national heritage site is a heritage site having a value that has been registered by a governmental agency as being of national importance to the cultural heritage or history of that country. Usually such sites are listed in a heritage registe ...

Hilversum Hilversum () is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes, and smaller towns. Hilvers ...

, where the radio and TV studios and the head office of the Dutch public broadcasting association

AVRO AVRO, short for Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep ("General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), was a Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system. It was the first public broad ...

(Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep or "General Association of Radio Broadcasting") were located until 2000. The buildings have since been used by other companies for different purposes.

History

522701-Studiogebouw 's-Gravelandseweg 52

The studios were built between 1934 and 1940 according to plans by the architects and . The interior was by Alexander Bodon, who among other things designed the seats in the orchestra hall. The smaller studio 1 is located below studio 2, separated by Melkpad street. Studio 1 from 1936 (with added

gatehouse A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the mos ...

, coffee room and office wing from 1940) and Studio 2 from 1940 have been protected as national monuments since 2002. Both studios are connected by an underground tunnel. The last extension of the studies was carried out from 1968 to 1972 with the so-called TV-Flat and was converted into a medical center which opened in November 2012. Following the sale by AVRO in 2004, the television production company Blue Circle (the Dutch subsidiary of the media company

FremantleMedia Fremantle (; formerly FremantleMedia) is a British multinational television production and distribution company based in London. Fremantle takes its name from Fremantle International, acquired by predecessor company All American Television in ...

) resided in Studio 2 before moving to Amsterdam. In 2000, AVRO,

KRO KRO, or (Catholic Radio Broadcasting), was a Dutch public broadcasting organization founded on 23 April 1925. Broadly Catholic in its spiritual outlook, KRO broadcast the bulk of its television output on the NPO 1 channel. KRO was also responsi ...

and

NCRV NCRV (Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging) (English: Dutch Christian Radio Association) was a public radio and television broadcaster in the Netherlands, mostly transmitting on NPO 1 and NPO 2. On 1 January 2014, NCRV merged with KRO to for ...

moved into new premises, the building. In July 2002, the two studio complexes were registered as

Rijksmonument A rijksmonument (, ) is a national heritage site of the Netherlands, listed by the agency Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) acting for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. At the end of February 2015, the Netherlands ...

(No. 522700 and No. 522701) because they are “functional buildings with an expressionist design” and “are exemplary for their construction period”. The AVRO studio complex has been recreated in miniature (scale 1 to 25) in the

miniature city A miniature park is a display of miniature buildings and models, usually as a recreational and tourist attraction open to the public. A miniature park may contain a model of a single city or town, often called a miniature city or model village ...

Madurodam Madurodam (, opened 1952) is a miniature park and tourist attraction in the Scheveningen district of The Hague in the Netherlands. It is home to a range of 1:25 scale model replicas of famous Dutch landmarks, historical cities and large developme ...

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

Concert organ

Studio 1 housed the original , which was played by solo organist from 1937 until his retirement in 1967. The organ, one of the largest original

theater organ A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films, from the 1900s to the 1920s. Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements o ...

s in the Netherlands, was removed in 2004 after the studios were sold and was put into storage in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...

for the next 15 years. It was renamed in tribute after the organist in 2013 when restoration work began in

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a city and municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 157,486. It is the capital of the province of North Brabant and its fourth largest by population. The city is south of th ...

. It was rebuilt in 2019 and found a new home in Studio 1 of the (Broadcasting Music Centre; NMBC), the former

VARA Vara or VARA may refer to: Geography *Vara (river), in Liguria, Italy * Vara Parish, former municipality in Tartu County, Estonia * Vara, Estonia, village in Peipsiääre Parish, Tartu County, Estonia * Vara Municipality, municipality in western S ...

studios, where a place had already been made available from the start for the Radio Concert Organ that had been bought from the BBC, which was never installed there. After many setbacks, the AVRO Concert Organ was finally taken into use in December 2019 under the new name 'Pierre Palla Concert Organ'.

References

External links

{{S-end Rijksmonuments in North Holland Buildings and structures in North Holland Mass media in Hilversum Office buildings completed in 1936 1936 establishments in the Netherlands Television studios

History

Concert organ

See also

References

External links