Completed in 2023 in Breda, The Netherlands. Images by Sebastian van Damme. History. In the 1970s, the Koninklijke Coöperatieve Cosun U.A. (Suikerunie / the Dutch Sugar Union) is looking for a new head office in Breda. The...
Completed in 2023 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Images by Ossip van Duivenbode. The Apollolaan is a prominent green avenue in Amsterdam’s south district, within a unique neighborhood defined by Berlage’s architecture from the...
This article was originally published on Domus 1056, April 2021.
The Kröller-Müller Museum is located in De Hoge Veluwe National Park, 80 kilometres east of Amsterdam near the village of Otterlo. The museum is the life’s work of one of the most important private collectors of the early 20th century: Helene Kröller-Müller. Thanks to an almost unlimited budget, from the family business Wm H. Müller & Co, and an irrepressible ambition, she brought together over 11,000 artworks, including an unprecedented number of pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian and many other modern masters. Almost from the outset, her goal was to have her collection benefit the community and to house it in a museum. And as with everything she did, she set the bar high for this too. Initially, the intended location was the Ellenwoude estate in Wassenaar near The Hague, which Helene and her husband Anton Kröller purchased in 1911. The chosen architect was the German Peter Behrens, who left the preparations largely to his young assistant Ludwig Mies (who later went by the name of Mies van der Rohe). Helene got along well with Mies. He was calm, serious and listened to her ideas. When Mies was dismissed by Behrens, the Kröllers ended their relationship with the latter. Instead, they asked Mies to propose a new design based on Behrens’s floor plan.