Nieuwe Zakelijkheid, translated as New Objectivity or New Pragmatism, is a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

period of

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

that started in the 1920s and continued into the 1930s. The term is also used to denote a (brief) period in art and literature (especially the early novels ''Blokken'', ''Knorrende Beesten'', and ''Bint'' by

Ferdinand Bordewijk Ferdinand Bordewijk (10 October 1884 – 28 April 1965) was a Dutch author. His style, which is terse and symbolic, is considered to belong to New Objectivity and magic realism. He was awarded the P. C. Hooft Award in 1953 and the Constantijn ...

). Related to and descended from the German movement

Neue Sachlichkeit The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the '' Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, w ...

, Nieuwe Zakelijkheid is characterized by angular shapes and designs that are generally free of ornamentation and decoration. The architecture is based on functional considerations and often included open layouts that allowed spaces to be used with flexibility. Sliding doors were included in some of the designs.

The movement is associated with Het Nieuwe Bouwen (new building) and was contemporary and related to cubism and

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

, and applies similar design principles to architecture. Dutch architects working in this style included

Theo van Doesburg Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nell ...

Gerrit Rietveld Gerrit Rietveld (24 June 1888 – 25 June 1964) was a Dutch furniture designer and architect. Early life Rietveld was born in Utrecht on 24 June 1888 as the son of a joiner. He left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at n ...

, and J.J.P. Oud. The

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

is similar to the artwork of Piet Mondrian, who was working contemporaneously with the architects. Common influences are also seen in furniture designs. Some critics associated the style with

dogmatic Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam o ...

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

Capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

, seeing in the buildings a reflection of the mass-produced values that comes with a focus on economy rather than craftsmanship.

Dutch East Indies

COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Luchtfoto_van_het_gebouw_van_de_NHM_in_Djakarta_Kota_TMnr_60054793

By the end of the 1920s, Nieuwe Zakelijkheid had become popular in the Dutch East Indies. The style was slightly conformed to the tropical climate of Indonesia with the addition of the 'double facade' concept, a typical element of tropical Indische architecture. The earliest example of this is the office of the

Netherlands Trading Society The Netherlands Trading Society ( nl, Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij or NHM) was a Dutch trading and financial company, established in 1824 in The Hague by King William I to promote and develop trade, shipping and agriculture. For the next 140 ...

building (1929) in

Batavia, Dutch East Indies Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residen ...

now Bank Mandiri Museum, built under a well-planned spatial planning around the station square Stationsplein of Kota Station, a sample of pre-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

urban planning which for Southeast Asia was completely unprecedented. Other notable examples are

Palembang City Hall The Palembang Mayoral Office, also known as Kantor Ledeng, is an office building in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia, which is used as the seat of the municipal government of the city. It was built as a water tower with an office for the coloni ...

(Snuyf, 1928-1931, nicknamed ''Gedung Ledeng'', Indonesian "plumb building") and Kota Post Office Building (Baumgartner, 1929).

References

{{Reflist Architecture in the Netherlands

Dutch East Indies

See also

References