A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 7 November 2023 - T for modernism

Hello lovely ladies,

I'm home!! I got home on Sunday night and it was wonderful to be able to sleep in my own bed. Ahhh.

I'm very tired, but I'll get over that. OK, let's show you a postcard:

This card was sent by my friend Maggie, who was visiting Berlin. The church is the Emperor Wilhelm Memorial Church. 

The church was built on the site of the church which was heavily bombed during  WW II. Part of the old church remains as a memorial.

Wikipedia writes: The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, mostly just known as Gedächtniskirche  is a Protestant church affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia,  It is located in Berlin on the Kurfürstendamm in the centre of the Breitscheidplatz.

The original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The present building, which consists of a church with an attached foyer and a separate belfry with an attached chapel, was built between 1959 and 1963. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall.

The Memorial Church today is a famous landmark of western Berlin, and is nicknamed by Berliners "der hohle Zahn", meaning "the hollow tooth".

The new church was designed by Eiermann and consists of four buildings grouped around the remaining ruins of the old church. The initial design included the demolition of the spire of the old church but following pressure from the public, it was decided to incorporate it into the new design. The four buildings comprise, on the west of the ruins, the new church with a foyer to its west, and to the east of the ruins, a tower with a chapel to its northeast. The plan of the church is octagonal while the plan of the tower is hexagonal.

The stamp is a normal German stamp (but still very pretty) with baby animals. This has baby mountain goats.

So, what is happening here with me? 

I flew back to Spain from the Netherlands early Friday morning. I had been staying at my cousin's for two nights. Somebody from the church offered to drive me to the airport near Amsterdam (about an hour's drive). When he rang the bell to pick me up, in my haste I left my phone on the hall table and have been without a phone ever since. Of course it is being sent back but I won't receive it until later this week. My driving license and my debit card were also in there. Uff, it's a pretty dumb thing to do, I know.

My friends Antonia, Susi and Maaike came to pick me up from the airport in Malaga as we were all going to this Christian Women's conference over the weekend. Of course I have no photos of the event or the apartment on the beach where we had lodgings. When I have my phone back, my friends will send me the photos that they took and I will feature them.

I promised that I would share pictures of the Huis Sonneveld, the 'museum house' I had visited last week. 

This house is in a row of several modernist villas built in the 1930s. This particular one is open to the public.

In The Late 1920s, Albertus And Gésine Sonneveld Commission Architects Brinkman And Van Der Vlugt To Design A Family Home. The Bureau Had Previously Designed A Factory For Van Nelle, Where Sonneveld Was Director Of The Tobacco Department. Inspired By His Business Trips To America, He Has All Kinds Of Technical Gadgets Installed, Like A Sound System For The Entire House, A Telephone Network, A Goods Lift And A Tenheaded Massage Shower. The Result Is An Ultra-Modern Dwelling In The Nieuwe Bouwen Or International Style.

This is the studio on the ground floor:

The photos are all mine, but if you want a bit more info and better photos, please read this article (with photos).

The living area is open plan, very unusual for the 1930s:

I had to wear protective 'socks' over my shoes to protect the woollen carpets.

The master bedroom is beautiful:

The wall behind the bed is a yellow metallic paint and looks like matte gold. It is much better visible in the photos of the article (link above).

The bathrooms were both a stark turquoise. 

This is the daughters' bathroom which they shared. 

I really enjoyed this museum. All the original furniture was there although some pieces have been copied to make the house complete. The vanity unit in the bedroom is an exact copy as the original didn't survive. (There is a photo of that in the article that I linked).

Outside the museum is a building which is one large round mirror. I wondered what it was:

I could see it through the window of the Sonneveld house. The mirror reflects the surrounding skyline.

Outside I got a bit closer:

And I found out it was the art depot: Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, popularly called 'The Pot') is an art depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It is the first publicly accessible art depot in the world.

It is a 39.5 meter high, bowl-shaped building that is covered with reflective plates, so that a more or less contiguous, reduced mirror image of the environment can be seen, whereby one can look over the surrounding buildings.

I wanted to visit that too. So a few days later I went there with my cousin, but we should have booked a time slot to get in, so that will have to wait until the next time I go to Rotterdam.

Today is T for Tuesday, hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard, so I need a drink. That is not difficult as I have been eating out a lot.

On the last day before the key handover, I had lunch with one of my mum's friends. She took me to a restaurant on the river:

Here we are together have a good old chinwag:

The waiter took the picture.

I had a goat's cheese salad and a glass of wine:

My companion had a sandwich:

I think I'll leave it at that. 

Happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Lisca

 https://www.pavelhache.com/bauhaus-100-sonneveld-house-in-rotterdam/