* Prologue; 

The initial idea of this site started after an email with Mariele Mijnlieff when I expressed the missing and regular thoughts of Hein van Greevenbroek, who sadly passed away. He was a remarkable person and loved by many friends. I was not the only one who misses him, she told me.

Around 10 years ago he designed and draw a house for me, during the years he was always curious about the progress and a few months before his death, he told me that he was keen to visit the purchased terrain in Brasil for a site visit, sadly at that time he was already to ill to walk, it brook my hart.

However, this project continues, it's not easy and also time consuming but I will try to keep his spirit alive in steel, concrete and bricks to create a landmark what will be recognized by everyone who knew him.

Therefore I decided to publish something more or less regularly at the WWW to follow the (slowly) progress of the building activities.

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The early and ignorant years

Life seemed simple and quite square for the first 18 years of my life, school was a waste of time to me and at home we had a huge playground to do whatever we wanted.

After we learned to swim and as long as we went to church two times at Sundays and arrived at the diner table at 18.00, almost everything was allowed.

Building sheds and rafts from all material we found, running around with old mopeds and making big fires, buying your first (scrap)car at 12 years age at the local dealer, the only paperwork needed was a handover of a note of 25 florins,but an important issue for the buy was the amount of leftover gasoline in it, we drove to one of the numerous empty terrains to start driving with our friends... name it and me and my brother did it. Actually it's a miracle I'm still breathing.

Shattered dreams and awakening

Around the age of 19 things seemed to change, my very first and, in my mind, forever girlfriend, kicked me out of her life.

I started questioning myself;  would I enjoy the things and jobs, that  I did so far, for the rest of my lifetime....?

It was a rough wakeup and I decided that it was time for a radical change, quit my job, rented my house and went back to school.

At that time I met an important person in my life, she took me by the hand and opened the world of literature, music, theatre and architecture to me.

Also we enjoyed a motorcycle trip to Southern Europe together, we reached Southern Spain and during the trip we visited cities with a great history and architecture  which I had never seen before, the image in my mind, created by Dutch history books, seemed completely different than the surprising reality.

At our return trip North our final Spanish stopover was Barcelona, the city with the creations of Antoni Gaudi.

I was always raised with a Calvinistic mindset, practical and modest " Behave normal, that's crazy enough"; my parents approach...

But this city overwhelmed me, buildings beyond imagination, streets as wide as rivers and all habitants walked and behaved like it was all business as usual.

In Barcelona I discovered that something could be build different than straight walls and a roof, still being practical, beautiful, and maybe more important; with some tension and attraction. Architecture suddenly became more to me than just a building as a factory ,office or a house to live in.

Building my own designed house started growing on me and has been fed by the visit of countries and cities around the world.

How I met Hein

In that period of time I met at school Aleid , at that time she was the girlfriend of Jaap van Greevenbroek, Hein's brother.

Long story short; Jaap was looking for a deckhand on his tjalk " De Waerdt van Catwijck" ( old historical sailing vessel), she sailed with him as deckhand and girlfriend, but didn't had time always, she asked me if I had time to fill in the gaps, if she was occupied with school business...

Curious as I was; yes! I was happy to do it, new adventures...

Again a total new world was discovered, I enjoyed my time in the different world of sailing, soon school was a bit astern of me.

At that period Hein ( I didn't met him until so far) bought a vessel " De Vlieter".

That year at wintertime Hein was preparing, his just bought vessel, for the coming tourist summer and Jaap ,amongst others, was giving him a helping  hand with carpentering, always short handed and more work than expected, I was asked by Jaap, to assist with painting jobs at " De Vlieter".

That's how I landed in Amstelhoek, maybe one of the most important places with a group of people, far beyond the normal world, at scheepswerf " De Dissel", all strange to me, but immediately I felt at home; Klaas; singing Calvinistic hymns while he was demonstrating the marvelous sanding capacities of "Scotch Brite", my first met of Rob Goud... who was working at his vessel at the same cay... the coffee brakes at the dinner table in the living room of Klaas and Saskia (yard owners), it all seemed quite chaotic to me, but all friendly and without any rooster behaviour, also all jobs went with quite some progress ... I did what I was capable of and I noticed that it was appreciated .

Hein was one of the most quiet ones, quiet, but silently in control, after these days of tough, but joyful workdays, he gave me a book with a few written words in it " Kees , thanks for your help and joy you gave us"...The beginning of a friendship, that lasted until the end.

In the years that followed we joined lots of sailing adventures, jobs, nice diners and just time together...no games,no need to hide, he saw me and listened....and I learned from him.

 

My bucket item

About 30 years later I explained my friend Hein roughly my building plans and what I wanted and asked him to make a sketch to start with.

Hein already had made some drawings for me and others and I always liked his designs.

He answered that he was in for it, but required a visit at the site were building was planned.

I didn't expected a different approach from him and he took a flight to Portugal were I was living at that time.

After arrival, we talked, enjoyed the Portugese kitchen, measured the area and I ventilated my ideas. The only real requirement from my side was that the design should have a tower, I like a tower as a part of a house, some sort of childish fairytale or knight desire maybe? Also it should be a-symmetrical and contain curved lines, but not all, just enough to provide some confusion.

A normal architect had drunk his coffee and left the room after half an hour, but this unprofessional gibberish didn't seem to bother Hein. He mentioned his visit to a church in France, " Notre dame sur haute" of Le Corbusier , and he suggested to take some aspects of this building also as inspiration.

Besides others, one of Heins talents was always listening carefully,, shifting bullshit from significance, considering pros and cons,  before he started to produce something.

After 3 nice days he went home to Norway with sufficient information to start.