PREVI was an experimental district collectively designed by many radical architects one of which was Aldo van Eyck.  They developed prototypes of urban housing for the quickly growing population.  Aldo van Eyck noticed that women were the heart of the home, and placed the kitchen in the center of the floor plan. He also took a more proscriptive approach to how the owners should expand, creating diagonally walled courtyards to discourage people building on top of them. It did not work out well though because outdoor space is not sacred to a family of eight with another generation on the way.

The Wheels of Heaven Church was a project that Aldo van Eyck designed in 1966.  It was designed for the construction of a Protestant church in the village of Driebergen, Holland. Van Eyck won the job, but it would never be built. Like other projects, this building was antisymmetric avoiding a single center. Each circular space had an independent desk suspended above the slab through a narrow strip of windows.  It provoked an effect of weightlessness emphasized by the lighting of skylights. The different orientation of these skylights and interior spaces with the circular desks gave the whole rotational-dynamic effect that justified the Wheels of Heaven name.

Aldo van Eyck built his first playground in Amsterdam. in 1947 It was a spatial experiment that marked the childhood of many kids.  His playgrounds were built in a time of need with the baby boom after the war. His playgrounds were part of a movement towards “bottom up architecture that literally aimed to give space to the imagination.” He designed hundreds of playgrounds between 1947 and 1978. Only 90 survived into the 21st century with their original layout.

source: https://merijnoudenampsen.org/2013/03/27/aldo-van-eyck-and-the-city-as-playground/

Aldo van Eyck designed this building much like his others as part of Structuralism.  He uses many different shapes and wants the empty space to be important. In the interior of the church he combined the quality of a low crypt-like space with a tall gothic-like one so that it felt low when seated during mass and tall when walking around. The tall three spaces opened upwards into the spacious circular drums above through which light would fall onto the altar and people.

Architect: Aldo van Eyck

The Hubertus House is a hostel for single parents and children in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The building is very colorful and open making it seen as the cheerful and peace place. It is concerned with the spirit and the establishment of a comfortable scale for the building of this type and size. It is made to be a non-stressful environment. The parents’ rooms are located near the street while the children’s rooms are located further inside because the parents had more activities on the street than the children.

Architect: Aldo van Eyck

The Amsterdam Orphanage was his first large scale built project.  It is also probably his most well-known project.  Van Eyck was one of the most influential people of the Structuralism architectural movement, and it is shown quite well in this building. As you can see below the design is rather interesting.  The units are laid on an orthogonal grid. He avoids creating a central point within the Orphanage to allow for fluid connection between all spaces.

Oklahoma Bible Academy was where I went to junior high and high school in Enid, Oklahoma. As a building, it’s frankly an eye sore.  There are four separate buildings that make up the high school.  Each building was built as they grew and needed more room.  The most recent addition added some classrooms and a large gym.  The school is 105 years old but has only been in Enid since 1985.  I spent six years at this school.  Each building is basically just a square with metal roofs. It is not easy to look at, but it was built on a budget with private donations in order to stay open and serve the community.

Located in Kansas City, Missouri, Arrowhead stadium is home to the Kansas City Chiefs.  It opened 44 years ago in 1972.  The shape is a fairly curved rectangular. It is the loudest open-air stadium thanks to the amazing fans.  The Chiefs have an old history with their former owner Lamar Hunt being an integral reason for the merger between the NFL and AFL.

Football and sports in general are a big part of my life. Tailgating at this stadium is a huge deal, and the fans are very inviting to new people. I’ve been a fan of the Chiefs since I was six years old when I first came to this stadium.    

I know that I am probably the twentieth person to write about our football stadium, but it really has meant a lot to me.  Since I was a young kid, my father and I would come to at least one football game every year.  We would get to see Jason White, Adrian Peterson, and Sam Bradford destroy every team that came to play here.  We even got to see Bob Stoops’s second ever loss in that stadium.  

Win or lose (mostly win) my father and I really bonded over football and especially OU football.  Standing in the student section has always been fun for the past few years, but sometimes I miss walking up those 18 ramps up to our seats in the upper section on the east side.  The Palace on the Prairie is truly beautiful, and I hope to never stop coming to games.

On my study abroad trip during the summer of 2015, one day we got the opportunity to travel to Vatican City.  The Vatican as a whole is beautiful.  Being in a different city-state within a city was rather interesting. St. Peter’s Basilica is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic churches.  The building is simply massive.  The ceiling looks to be over one hundred feet high.  It is the largest church in the world and was completed in November 1626. The art and architecture are nearly breathtaking.  The main part that I loved about the Vatican and many other places in Italy was the architectural achievements and beauty that were built several hundred years ago.  In the United States, the oldest things we get to see here are maybe a couple hundred years old.