To celebrate the unique and influential Dutch design sensibility, the fact the Dutch are the tallest people in the world and that they feel the desire-need to cheek kiss not once or twice but thrice upon a friendly meeting, as well as to acknowledge their fine play on the soccer field (and yes, perhaps as meager but decorative consolation for their loss earlier this month to Spain in the finals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup), let us examine the St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge—designed in 1915 by Dutch architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, considered by many of his countrymen to be the father of Modern architecture in the Netherlands.

Regardless of exactly who might be considered Dutch Modernism’s Daddy, H.P. Berlage (1856-1934) was a seminal groundbreaker. An architect and urban planner, he served as an intermediary between late 19th-century movements such as Neo-Romanesque and Arts and Crafts, and early 20th-century Modern movements, such as the New Objectivity, De Stijl and the Amsterdam School.

His buildings include the Amsterdam Commodities Exchange and The Hague Municipal Museum, as well as the St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge, a heady architectural cocktail of rationalism, functionalism and constructional decoration.

As a building material, brick was Berlage’s byword. In terms of utility, he favored it for its durability and practicality, versatility and availability. Conceptually, he was attracted to its humility (as opposed to stone), and, hence to its “honesty”—a loaded word that could as easily be attached to brick by architects Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright, all three important influences on Berlage, all three philosophically and aesthetically different, all three partial to brick’s ability to convey weight, mass and form.

The St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge is a symphony of brickwork. Symphonies are, of course, anything but simple in construction, and the hunting lodge is similarly complex. Berlage based all of his calculations on the dimensions of the bricks, in which the size of the stretcher (brick length) determines the length of the brick surfaces, and the size of the header (brick thickness) determines the height. In the hunting lodge, a brick size of 10 x 21 x 5 cm was the standard, and practically the entire building is formed in dimensions of 110 cm (or ten headers plus the mortar joints). This ruler is applied uniformly outside, where the red bricks were left in their fired color, and inside, where they were glazed red, green, yellow, blue, light grey or black.

While exposed building materials and structural elements used as interior decoration are common in the Arts and Crafts Movement, and subsequently became a mainstay of many Modern design movements, the complexity of both the planning and execution of the interior brickwork at the St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge is mind bending. Every brick—from the lines of vertical bond (cross bonds wouldn’t have allowed the symmetry Berlage was after), to those used on rounded corners, around windows and above lintels, to those whose colors formed the geometric designs on the floors, walls and ceilings—was first drawn out in full and numbered. From this calculation, the bricks were then ordered and fired. After this, they were inspected, renumbered, color coded, and sent to the “Porceleine Fles” in Delft for glazing. After which they were sent back to the building site. Only then was the first brick laid.

And as far as the complexity of building plan’s execution? Let’s limit ourselves to a description of the construction of the decorative coffered ceiling panels found in the entryway, which is indicative of the skill, craft and migraines required by the construction of the hunting lodge as a whole:

1. The shape is determined and measured; 2. A mold is made in situ and placed under the ceiling’s steel joists; 3. Bricks are laid from above, requiring a number dies; 4. Once the mortar is dry, the mold and dies are removed (the coffers are self-supporting because the first layer of bricks, the outer edge, is laid in the “T” of the steel joists).

In addition to the designing the building and overseeing construction, Berlage also designed every aspect of the interiors: furniture, lighting, light switches, locks, air vents, door furnishings, even cover plates for the keyholes. Materials ranged from the refined—teak and coromandel ebony, to stone and iron, to pine and more glazed brick. He also fitted the house with central heating, a central vacuum cleaning system, sliding windows that retracted downwards and disappeared almost completely (reputedly modeled on windows in Pullman railway cars), direct-current electric lighting, and an elevator.

Construction lasted over five years, and total cost 6.5 million Dutch guilders, or in today’s terms, roughly the equivalent of €65 million or $85 million (in addition to St. Hubertus, this sum also paid for the creation of the artificial lake behind the lodge, a stone bridge and a service building).

No expense was spared—there was literally no budget—a lack of limits that was purely the design of its owners, Anton and Helene Kröller-Müller, industrialists and philanthropists who built St. Hubertus with the intention of giving it to the Dutch nation. The hunting lodge is, in fact, only one part of a much larger Kröller-Müller legacy, which includes the surrounding 21-square-mile National Park De Hoge Veluwe, as well as the Kröller-Müller Museum, which sits within the park and which contains Helene’s entire art collection of approximately 800 paintings, 275 sculptures, 5,000 drawings and prints as well as some 500 arts and crafts artifacts—all carefully purchased and conserved with a museum in mind. (And we’re talking serious art. In addition to having the second largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the world, second only to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the museum also has a substantial number of works by Piet Mondrian, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Odilon Redon, George Braque, Paul Gaugin, James Ensor, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso.)

Often much to Berlage’s chagrin, Helene was as intimately involved in the design of the St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge as she was with her art collection (and, indeed, as she was in the family business, which was founded by her father, but which her husband transformed into a truly international shipping conglomerate). She was determined that St. Hubertus be as perfect in execution as her fortune and energies could make it, and that it reflect the design sensibility of her time as well. In these goals, architect and patron were united. The results can be seen not only in the pictures above, but in the links to short movies below.

1.    Views of the hunting lodge from across the lake.
2.    View of the house from one of the symmetrical side gardens.
3.    Entry court.
4.    Entryway.
5.    Tower billiard room.
6.    Kitchen.
7.    Anton’s study.
8.    Anton’s bathroom.
9.    Helene’s dressing room.
10.    Helene’s bedroom.
11.    Helene’s sitting room.

St. Hubertus Hunting Lodge also houses sculptures by Joseph Mendes de Costa, Johan Altorf, Lambertus van Zijl, and John Rädecker; stained glass windows by Arthur Henning (depicting the legend of St. Hubertus); and color and paintwork by Bart van der Leck.

National Park de Hoge Veluwe lies outside the town of Otterlo, approximately 90 miles from Amsterdam.

Interior images from top: Drawing of Anton’s study; Anton’s study; Glazed brick ceiling detail; Dining room; Smoking room/library; Floor detail, smoking room/library; Helen’s sitting room.