Op zoek naar de tropenstijl, Leven en werk van prof. ir. C.P. Wolff Schoemaker, Indisch architect

Abstract

This thesis is about the life and work of Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker. He was born on Java in 1882 and died on the same island in May 1949. For his secondary school education and study at the KMA (Royal Military Academy), Charles was sent to the Netherlands. In 1905 he returned to the Dutch East Indies, where, after a short career in the KNIL (Royal Dutch East Indies Army), he held positions as engineer with de Water Works Department of the Ministry of Civil Public Works, director of Public Works of the city of Batavia, independent architect and professor at the Colleges of Technology in Bandoeng en Delft during the period from 1920 until 1940. He played an important part in an almost forgotten chapter of the Dutch history of architecture: the architecture of Dutch architects in the former Dutch East Indies, the colonial version of Dutch East Indies architecture. Since 1918 Charles, together with his younger brother Richard, was running an architectural bureau: C.P. Schoenmaker en Associates in Bandoeng. The bureau designed many buildings, especially in Bandoeng. From the beginning both brothers were involved with the Technical College of Bandoeng. After Richard was appointed as a professor at Delft in 1924, Charles took over his position in Bandung. Charles would stay on as a professor until 1941. His best known student happened to be Soekarno, the first president of the Republic of Indonesia. Soekarno en Charles remained friends for the rest of their lives. The architecture in the Dutch East Indies went through a fast development during the first decades of the twentieth century. At first building took place in the neo classical style which had been brought along from the Netherlands. Adjustments of the way of building to the tropical environment were gradually incorporated. Until the middle of the twenties the architects were searching an authentic Indo-European building style. The discussion that followed was mainly held by those architects who committed themselves with body and soul against or in favour of this style. Maclaine Pont and Thomas choose a revolutionary point of view with a starting point aimed at employing the traditional local architecture. Wolff Schoemaker followed another course, maintaining the western constructive core of the architecture and incorporating various Indian and Indies influences through an evolutionary process. By the lack of a platform for exchanging thoughts, this discussion soon came to an end but still resulted in something. It had a liberated effect and made room for experimentations. Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker was a western architect with an Indies hart. For the benefit of a to the tropics adjusted architecture, described by him as “the tropic style”, he looked for a synthesis between the western and eastern building styles. He found these in the stupas and temples of British India. Wolff Schoemaker studied this architecture in a Berlagian way. He dared to set renovating steps in that process and to let go of ancient shapes.