J.J. Pieter Oud

Dutch architect (Purmerend, 9 February 1890 - Wassenaar, 5 April 1963)

Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, commonly called JJP Oud (Purmerend, 9 February 1890 – Wassenaar, 5 April 1963)
He was a Dutch architect and urban planner.

He studied in Amsterdam and Delft. In Amsterdam he spent a period of apprenticeship in the studio of PJH Cuypers. He then went to Munich, where he worked in the studio of Theodor Fischer and then moved to Leiden where he collaborated with the architects AJ Van der Steur, Willem Marinus Dudok, H. Kamerling-Onnes. In those years he also met Theo Van Doesburg and with him, Piet Mondrian and Cornelis van Eesteren he founded the magazine “De Stijl”.

Oud created some popular neighborhoods that constitute one of the highest moments of the ethical-aesthetic commitment of the Modern Movement; significant examples are the blocks of workers' houses Spangen (1918-1919) and Kiefhoek (1925-1927) in Rotterdam, the workers' neighborhoods of Hoek van Holland (1924), minimal houses in series for the Weissenhof neighborhood in Stuttgart (1927).

These works, which have their roots in the highly evolved Dutch housing tradition, are characterised by a harmonious composition of internal and external spaces in volumes with white plastered surfaces, where the frames of the doors and windows stand out, painted with the pure colours of Mondrian.

These results are the result of both a great work of reflection and study on the theme of housing and of a deep knowledge of the most recent research in this field at an international level; Oud, in fact, even before joining the neoplasticist movement, had studied the lesson of English domestic architecture as well as the experiments conducted in this direction by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Precisely because of these studies, he gave a completely personal interpretation of neoplasticism and the decomposition of space preached by De Stijl and remained an important figure in his work, even when in 1933 he abandoned his role as architect of the city of Rotterdam and resumed private activity. From this period we remember the Shell Palace in The Hague (1938-1942), the children's sanatorium near Arnhem (1952-1960), the government building for the southern Dutch province (The Hague, 1952-1965), the Cultural Centre in The Hague (1956-1958) and the City Hall of Utrecht (1962).
Source: Wikipedia