Last Monday, prof. Cees Dam passed away after a brief illness, at the age of 93. He was the founder of Dam & Partners Architecten and one of the most independently spirited architects the Netherlands has produced.
From his start as an independent architect in the early sixties until the beginning of this century, he designed and realised hundreds of projects. Time and again he reconciled prevailing ideas with an un-Dutch sense of flair. Several projects became landmarks within his own lifetime.
For Cees Dam, architecture was first and foremost a pretext. A means to give space to people, to beauty and to wonder. His oeuvre ranged from public and private interiors and furniture to city halls and skyscrapers. Among the most telling examples are the National Opera & Ballet and City Hall in Amsterdam (in collaboration with Wilhelm Holzbauer), the City Hall of Almere, Wilhelminahof (the first buildings on the Kop van Zuid) in Rotterdam, and the House of the Future in Rosmalen. Each on its own scale, each bearing his unmistakable signature. Seinpost housing development in Scheveningen (1980) marked the breakthrough for him and the practice.
In his work, Cees Dam drew on the visual arts, theatre and music. These connections were not decorative but formative, visible from concept to detail in the quality of his spaces. As in the interior of restaurant Le Garage in Amsterdam, the elegant contemporary canal house at Amstel 270, the far-reaching renovation and extension of the Ministry of Agriculture and Economic Affairs on the Bezuidenhoutseweg in The Hague, and the restoration of the Abbey Complex in Middelburg for the Provincial Council of Zeeland. Particularly dear to him personally were the showroom for couturier Frans Molenaar in Amsterdam and the grave of Karel Appel at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
He engaged readily and often in public debate. He served in advisory roles in the fields of art and culture, chaired the Amsterdam urban aesthetics committee, and was a much sought-after jury member. He is widely known to the general public through his popular Teleac television courses on architecture.
From 1993, Cees Dam was professor of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology; from 1995 to 1998 he also served as its dean. There, with his sharp and uncompromising view of the discipline, he shaped a new generation of architects.
In his own words: “We must always keep fighting for the impossible. It is, after all, so much more beautiful than the possible.“
In 2007, Cees Dam was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He was an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau (1995) and received the Gouden Eeuw Award in 2009 because he is “one of the few Dutch architects capable of giving buildings a sense of grandeur.” He was also honorary consul of Guatemala in the Netherlands for many years.
Until well into old age, Cees Dam felt deeply connected to the office. Dam & Partners Architecten, under the leadership of architect Diederik Dam and the entire team, continues to work on architecture that truly matters: curious, uncompromising and built for tomorrow.
Dam & Partners Architecten, Amsterdam
