Spatial Order (with drawing)- Aldo Van Eyck Municipal Orphanage Amsterdam

A larger courtyard is offset diagonally from the residential spaces, and the entrance and administrative spaces connect with the street, the large courtyard, as well as the residential units. Van Eyck avoids creating a central point within the Orphanage by allowing for such fluid connections between all spaces. The layering that occurs at the orphanage is never overwhelming. The visual spatial extensions of the orphanage are rooted and never upset the stability of the space that you are in. Van Eyck has figured out a way of layering spaces without creating ambiguity. Aldo van Eyck said once that "the building was conceived as a configuration of intermediary places clearly defined. This does not imply continual transition or endless postponement with respect to place and occasion. On the contrary, it implies a break away from the contemporary concept (call it sickness) of spatial continuity and the tendency to erase every articulation between spaces, i.e., between outside and inside, between one space and another. Instead, I tried to articulate the transition by means of defined in-between places which induce simultaneous awareness of what is signified on either side." He also wrote, "a house must be like a small city if it's to be a real house, a city like a large house if it's to be a real city" in an essay published in 1962 titled 'Steps Toward a Configurative Discipline.