Een Apeldoorns ‘onderonsje’. De veelbesproken prijsvraag voor een protestantse kerk te Apeldoorn (1890-1891)

Abstract

The proceedings of the competition were also influenced by the fact that the protestant religious conviction of the commissioning authority and the accompanying requirements a church building had to comply with, did not appear to have played an equally important role for all the parties involved in the competition, which was of overriding importance for the outcome. In the explanations of the designs of a number of participating architects the importance of a good view of the pulpit and good acoustics are prominent. In the jury report typically protestant requirements concerning hearing and seeing the clergyman play a less prominent role. The jury report shows that the members of the jury were primarily interested in the visual characteristics of the church buildings designed. Although the jury actually considered the design of Verheul, which scored well on many functional points, as the best design, the design of P. du Rieu was preferred to Verheul’s because it was said to have a more ecclesiastical character. Thanks to the perceptivity of the commissioning authority the Reformed Congregation in Apeldoorn eventually obtained a church building which was satisfactory from a functional point of view, and did not just possess the aesthetic qualities awarded by the jury. The commissioning authority kept an eye on the requirements set to a church building by the protestant service, so that Verheul’s design was realized and not the design of Du Rieu which had been awarded by the jury. The many incidents during the competition and the subsequent fierce reactions from architectural circles make the Apeldoorn competition one of the most discussed competitions in the nineteenth-century history of architectural competitions in the Netherlands.