BUILDING ZANDVOORT: TABULA RASA BY THE SEA

The exhibition Panorama Zandvoort at ABC Architectuurcentrum Haarlem takes visitors through 200 years of history of the historic seaside resort. For Kaj Zwerver, Zandvoort is a place full of family history and memories. After visiting the exhibition, he reflects on the changing municipality.

Zandvoort is nostalgia to me. I came here as a child and often think back to my earliest memories of the beach and the coastline, the Juttersmuseum and, recently voted the ugliest building in the Netherlands, Circus Zandvoort.

I regularly went walking with my grandfather in the Waterleidingduinen, just around the corner from their house. The Amsterdam Waterleidingduinen are partly a protected nature monument, and together with Zuid-Kennemerland National Park they mean that Zandvoort is historically enclosed between nature reserves. That contributes to the quality of life of its residents, but has put pressure on the housing stock for decades. Since 1975, housing construction has had to take place within the built-up area; expansion is not an option. Add the stream of beachgoers on a nice day, and the lack of space becomes visible.

FROM FISHING VILLAGE TO SEASIDE RESORT

The exhibition at ABC Architectuurcentrum Haarlem teaches us that Zandvoort's growth began in the early 19th century, when the village slowly transformed from a fishing village into a fashionable seaside resort. The construction of a tramline between Amsterdam and Zandvoort in the late 19th century, one of the first electric tramlines in the Netherlands, accelerated this development. Zandvoort grew into a popular family resort.

TABULA RASA

The Second World War put an end to this growth and had disastrous consequences that are still visible today. The village underwent major urban planning changes. Between 1940 and 1945, more than 800 buildings were demolished to make way for the ‘Stützpunktgruppe Zandvoort’. The defensive line of bunkers and other military structures that was erected was part of the Atlantic Wall. Everything along the boulevards and up to 200 metres inland had to go. A large part of the population was evacuated, the village became a military zone and the beaches were off limits to civilians.

In 1943, the Germans blew up the old water tower, fearing it would serve as a landmark for the Allies.

The Kostverlorenbuurt is one of the few neighbourhoods that came through the war unscathed. 19th-century bathing villas still stand here, in the typical seaside-resort architecture, with bay windows and verandas.

During the occupation, a reconstruction plan was already drawn up by the engineer, and later Government Architect (1946–1957), Gijsbert Friedhoff. He saw the devastation of the roughly three-kilometre-long seafront as a ‘clean slate’. In his opinion, “we need not nurse any heartache about the lost cultural values, and we can safely say that this disaster will mean the rise of Zandvoort.” The reconstruction plan increased the contrast between boulevard and village. The old village was to keep its village character, while the boulevard was to radiate grandeur: tourism, large squares and sweeping views of the sea.

A WAVE OF DEVELOPMENT

Today, the centrally located Badhuisplein with the Rotondegebouw looks somewhat desolate due to the closure of the casino. A new urban plan by the Zandvoort firm Springtij Architecten and Bureau Marlies van Diest wants to bring this square back to a scale that fits the old village better, in order to reconnect village and sea. This fits into a broader movement that wants to soften the consequences of the tabula rasa of the war and reconstruction. The Louis Davidscarré, the new town centre area designed by Mecanoo and Bureau Bos as a “new living room for Zandvoort”, also seeks to connect with the scale of the village.

Still, a coherent vision seems to be lacking at the municipal council. One could speak of a veritable wave of development currently flooding Zandvoort. The longest boulevard in the Netherlands is, according to its designers BoschSlabbers, to get an international character after its redesign.

This sounds nice, but it also carries the risk of globalisation, which in turn leads to loss of identity. The ‘globalised street’ is becoming a familiar phenomenon: based on the built environment, it is often no longer possible to tell where you are.

Take the future apartment complex Duinwachter by ROW Vastgoed, on the corner of Van Alphenstraat and Van Lennepweg. Hooyschuur architecten was commissioned to design a building that would not look out of place in Miami Beach or Monaco either. In that case, Zandvoort is clearly not the starting point of your design brief.

A new-build project that does respect the seaside-resort architecture of the past is the four apartment buildings on the Watertorenplein. Two residential blocks were designed by AG architecten, the other two by De Biase Architecten and Springtij Architecten. This way of building keeps a memory of Zandvoort's identity alive. The mix of social rent, mid-priced and more expensive owner-occupied homes also meets the current demand for affordable housing.

THE WATER TOWER

The landmark post-war water tower on this site, 48 metres high and designed in 1951 by Jouke Zietsma, has been treated with less respect. Despite its municipal monument status, the municipal council launched a competition for redevelopment because the tower was said to be in poor condition. The new water tower designed by Springtij Architecten would retain its main form, but at the same time become taller and wider in order to house eleven luxury apartments.

In the end, the old tower was almost completely demolished. For the second time, Zandvoort residents saw their water tower disappear: this time not through war, but through big capital. The heritage organisation Bond Heemschut is therefore right to state that the renewed water tower no longer deserves monument status. With an average purchase price of 1 million per apartment, and a penthouse of 3.5 million, this residential tower has little left to do with water.

WHAT IS MISSING

What stands out in the exhibition is that there is little attention to climate resilience. There is a small passage about the beach pavilions that are dismantled in winter so that the wind can blow sand against the dunes. This sand drift is essential for preserving the dunes. But nowhere do I read anything about flooding, even though Zandvoort, because of its location in the dunes, regularly has problems with drainage. As a child I remember streets that were regularly under water.

On the day of my visit to the expo, the streets of Zandvoort were still wet from the downpours of three days earlier, and a short search on the internet shows that flooding is an annually recurring phenomenon. A clear plan for coastal protection and depaving seems to be lacking, at least in the exhibition.

PAVING OVER THE COAST

The plans for Zandvoort remind me of the restructuring, read paving over, of Breskens. Roughly two centuries after Zandvoort, fishing also came to an end here in 2021 with the departure of the last fishing cutter. In the meantime, the first luxurious residential blocks have appeared in the former harbour area and the rest is well under development. Remarkably, at spring tide, about twice a month, this harbour area floods completely. Yet residential towers with car parks below NAP (sea level) are being built here, including a contractual clause stating that residents must take flooding into account. The Belgian coast, too, is heavily built up and is popularly known as the ‘concrete dike’. With future sea level rise, the gaps between the residential blocks could simply be bricked up for coastal protection.

Another fascinating phenomenon is that Belgian coastal development is currently expanding northwards. The Zeeland seaside resort of Cadzand once became famous thanks to the presence of star chef Sergio Herman, who has acquired pop-star status in Belgium. He has since left, but Belgian property developers stayed and are turning Cadzand-Bad into a kind of ‘Knokke-Noord’. Despite the many new-build projects, Cadzand-Bad remains deserted in winter. Cadzand's wish to have life there all year round in the future seems a difficult task, since the vast majority of the village consists of second homes; few owners voluntarily go to the coast in foul weather.

The exhibition ends with that same wish of Zandvoort to be attractive 365 days a year. Seaside resort and village is the vision of the future held out by the Zandvoort Environmental Vision. By 2040, Zandvoort wants to be the “most fun seaside resort in the Netherlands”. In short, Zandvoort wants everything. Perhaps this ambition is rooted in the philosophy of the racing circuit: Zandvoort wants to go forward, faster and faster. In doing so, it distances itself from the natural rhythm of a coastal town with busy summers and quiet winters.

BACK IN MY BIRTHPLACE

After visiting the expo, I travel on to Zandvoort. I visit the house where I was born, a few locations from the exhibition and the now-abandoned Holland Casino. At Noorderduin cemetery I visit my grandparents' grave. Zandvoort's famously iconic marram grass grows wild on it.

For me, this visit was not only professionally relevant, but also very personal. Zandvoort is, after all, my birthplace. I did not live there long, only the first two years of my childhood, but for the following fifteen years I kept coming to Zandvoort to visit my grandparents. Grandpa and Grandma Zwerver lived on Meester Troelstrastraat. From the skylight of the attic where we stayed, I loved to stare at the water tower. The shape and function of the tower fascinated me, years before I consciously engaged with architecture and long before I would write about this water tower.

Grandpa Zwerver was a doctor from the ’60s to the ’90s and kept his practice at home in the villa ‘Groot Kijkduin’, designed by architect Daniël Knuttel at Kostverlorenstraat 70. Partly thanks to his efforts, the villa still stands as a relic of the 19th century.