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Turmac building: space for ‘interplay with nature’

‘I’d worked in factories for years myself, which is why I knew they were always painted in colours that didn’t show the dust. That meant you didn’t have to clean them so much. I always found it quite depressing.’ When Alexander Orlow built a cigarette factory in Zevenaar after the war, he knew that his way had to be different. And different is what it became. Not only in that factory, but later also on the corner of De Boelelaan and Antonio Vivaldistraat.

Peter Stuyvesant Collection

After World War II, Orlow bought a steel bridge from the Dutch government and used it to refurbish the devastated tobacco factory in Zevenaar. He extended and reorganised things, reinstating the production of cigarette brands like Stuyvesant, Pall Mall, Dunhill and Rothmans. In 1955, he was rewarded for his work and Orlow became managing director of the so-called Turmac factory, but it was only in the years after that that he would really made his mark on it. Orlow knew from experience what the conditions and work in the factory could be like. ‘Sometimes, a girl would work at a single machine for years, having to continually endure the same view every time she raised her eyes.’ To counteract that monotony, the director set up an experiment. He started by having the walls painted in pastel colours and later hung movable colour squares in the factory building. Although this proved effective, it was not enough for art lover Orlow. On 4 July 1960, several large abstract works of art suddenly appeared above the massive production machinery in Zevenaar. It marked the start of what would later become the famous Peter Stuyvesant Collection.

Alexander Orlow

Undeveloped land in Buitenveldert

In the decades that followed, Orlow and his wife Jacobine purchased large amounts of contemporary art. Almost all the works in the collection were hung in the same unconventional place. The people hard at work in the cigarette factory had views of art by such greats as Karel Appel, Armando, Jef Diederen, Lucebert and David Salle. Although not all the employees cared to the same extent, there were some who even decided to purchase a paint brush and canvas and see if they could create a similar work themselves. When they started asking questions about the artists during working hours, the company began organising educational lectures at weekends. In the meantime, Turmac enjoyed steady growth and the increasing exports meant that an administrative head office needed to be built. Its location: an undeveloped piece of land in Buitenveldert. To design it, Orlow approached his friend and architect Hein Salomonson. In 1960, he had already built a townhouse in Apollolaan for the director and his wife, who held lavish parties there for Amsterdam’s ‘high society’.

Architect Hein Salomonson

Courtyard garden

In common with many other architects at that time, Salomonson’s design for the office building was strongly inspired by the ideas of the French architect Le Corbusier. Based on the latter’s Modulor system, a variation on the golden ratio, the architect aimed to design a building ‘that can offer a meaningful environment for people to work in and allows space for interplay with art and nature’. This aim is particularly visible on the building’s floorplan. The administrative departments are in a square that surrounds a courtyard garden designed by landscape architect Mien Ruys. Her patio, located at the centre of the building, makes the office appear to turn in on itself. From the outside, it is quite an enclosed brick entity. But when you enter it, you’re actually looking through large glass walls straight into the garden. A key reason for this was that Salomonson was not yet sure what else would be built around the building when he was designing it. By positioning the working areas around the garden and fountain designed by Mien Ruys, he made sure that the workers had the view of nature he wanted them to have, irrespective of what was built on the surrounding plots.

The office building patio

Public exhibitions

Alongside the garden, the art obviously also played a central role. It was visible on the work floor as well as in an exhibition area that had been especially designed for that purpose. In order to set the works against a neutral backdrop, Salomonson opted to use basic materials: concrete, aluminium, white walls and a little oak here and there. This made it possible to do justice to the collection, both for the staff and for the many visitors who regularly came there. In the decade after the office building’s completion in 1966, there were frequent public exhibitions of the company’s ever-growing art collection. What started life as an idealistic experiment had developed into a pioneering collection that was regularly exhibited internationally. But one that would ultimately fall victim to the darker side of the Turmac business.

Art in the Turmac office building, 1966

Auction

The capital invested in the collection by the company was raised from the sale of cigarettes. However, sales began to drop in the 1990s and the smoking ban in hospitality in 2008 came as a huge blow. This had major repercussions for the collection, by then renamed the BAT Artventure collection in order to remove the association with the Peter Stuyvesant brand of cigarettes. British American Tobacco Nederland, the owner of Turmac since 2000, opted to cut its losses and have the collection auctioned. In 2010, some six months after the initiator Orlow passed away, Sotheby’s auction house began to sell off the collection, ultimately raising more than € 17.5 million. A tidy sum for the cigarette merchant, but also a sad end to one of the Netherlands’ first leading corporate collections.

The Turmac office building in 2010

Municipal monument

Although it was mainly designed to be enjoyed from the inside, Hein Salomonson’s building in Vivaldistraat (previously known as Drentestraat) is set to remain and will not disappear from view. In 2015, it was accorded municipal monument status in recognition of its extraordinary design and the major role played by fine art on the work floor. It is a fitting tribute to Salomonson’s building and Alexander Orlow’s idealistic approach as an employer.

This is the eleventh and final article in a series about national and municipal monuments in and around Zuidas. The first was on the subject of the Thomaskerk. The second was about the old courthouse. The third was about the Europahal. The fourth about the Burgerweeshuis. The fifth about the Rietveld Academie. The sixth about the Buitenveldert cemetery. The seventh about Tripolis. The eighth about the Warnersblokken apartments. The ninth was about Kapel & Convict. And the tenth was about the Princesseflat apartment complex.

Text: Jort van Dijk

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