"POWER"
I tend to feel a little small when standing next to a building that looks like this. I think it's built to make you feel like that. It starts with the location: It's on top of a slope with green grass, so everyone can see it from the road below. It also makes you wonder if they chose to copy a certain White House that stands in Washington D.C. No this is a white house that's just pretending to be something like that. This is in fact - brace yourselves - this is “the White House of the Dutch town Bloemendaal".
This is one of the wealthiest municipalities of the Netherlands, so no wonder I felt a little bit impressed by it. But when I looked from the side of the building, I noticed they had demolished the original historical building from the back, so it's just the front that looks powerful. This makes it even less interesting in my opinion. There's just this facade in the front that makes you think it's powerful, but behind it, there is just a normal (non-historical) building, so in my opinion, it loses a little bit of its power.
Historical buildings will give you a sense of power. I don't mean that you are the one that's feeling the power. No, I mean that you are the one that gets intimidated by the power and beauty of the building.
When you look at old European churches for example. They're always at the centre of attention when people from all over the world travel to European cities. And it's also emphasised by the fact that they are literally standing in the centre of the city.
Why don't we make buildings like that anymore? Buildings that will make you stand still when you walk on the street and you just stare in awe at them.
In the Netherlands, it's mainly the problem of overpopulation. There are simply too many people that are living in the same small country, so we need more residential areas. But why don't they build more high skyscraper-like buildings near their city centres? They did this with Frankfurt in Germany for example. Where they have "Altstadt", which is the historical city centre and "Innenstadt", the modern 21st-century city centre. Instead, they build more suburban low-density areas here. Why?
Hmm, maybe a subject for another blog post...