Modernist monument.

VAN NELLE, MONUMENT IN PROGRESS

Rotterdam: De Hef. 2005. [euro]72.50

Gropius's Bauhaus, Le Corhusier's Project for the League of Nations and Brinkman and Van der Vlugt's Van Nelle factory were the Grand Projects of the late 1920s. We all know about Gropius and Le Corbusier, but what do we know about Jan Brinkman and Leendert Van der Vlugt?

This is a splendid book about a splendid building. It is the work of numerous authors describing different aspects of Van Nelle, telling us the history of the firm, of its architects and of the building. Van Nelle marketed tobacco, tea and coffee from the eighteenth century until after the Second World War. Most interesting for architects is the person of Kees Van der Leeuw, theosophist, enlightened employer and patron of architecture; he not only set up the young architects Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, he also paid for Richard Neutra's own house in Los Angeles.

By the 1990s, materials in factories no longer moved by gravity, and the multi-storey industrial building was superseded. This threatened to leave the vast Van Nelle complex without a use, and the problem of what to do with a beautiful, but high maintenance, building that is on the UNESCO list as a World Heritage Site. The most interesting part of the book is the story of the search for a new beneficial use and the restoration and adaptation of the building to suit its new function as a 'Design Factory', let out in units of modest size to organisations 'in the cultural sphere'.

The authors accept that there is a paradox about a 'Modernist Monument' and the preservation of a building intended to be a functional factory. Marieke Kuipers takes us through the bureaucratic and philosophical problems involved and Wessel de Jonge, architect and doyen of DoCoMoMo, describes the design and technical problems involved and the thought processes adopted. Essential reading for those involved in the conservation and adaptation of modern buildings.

The building seems well set for the next seventy years. Like so many multi-storey mills in the North of England, it is let out in parcels to firms with an artistic bias. One is left wondering whether there are enough such firms to fill the buildings.