Architecture: Radio Kootwijk Building A - 1/900

Time for an inbetweenie. This one was one and a half day of fun.

I came across a paper model of Building A of Radio Kootwijk, a beautiful piece of architecture in the Netherlands. A very large Art Deco structure used for radio transmissions. Here is a picture of the finished model, the rest of the story is available when you click on the rest of the story link below.

The main building, "Building A", in 2011 when I visited. The clouds give it an extra dramatic look.

Radio Kootwijk used to be a large radio and telegraph (and later telephone) transmitting system with several buildings on a plain at the Veluwe, a large woodland area in the middle of the Netherlands. It was mainly built as a meand of easier communications with the Dutch East Indies, our colonies in the Indonesian archipelago. originally they udes an ultra long wavelength (17,85 KM!) but later they started using other, shorter wavelengths. In WW2 the Germand occupied this radio station too and used it to communicate with their submarine fleet. They destroyed and robbed a lot of the equipment but after the war most of it was found back and Kootwijk was used as a radio transmitter up to around the mid-1960s. An interesting story, but this is about the architecture.

Julius Luthmann, the architect was inspired by a German building of the same type and the work of the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. The Kootwijk building was made out of reinforced concrete and was absoulutely unique in its size and style. The Dutch had their own modernist Art-Deco-derivative style, 'Amsterdamse School' but genuine Art Deco wasn't widely used.

The inside of the building also is amazing. The entrance of Building A has shiny green tiles with wood and brass, beautiful staircases and lots of small but high windows. The large hall just is one wide open space, with a large pattern-tiled floor, a beam structure to hold the roof and a balcony on either side of the room. You can climb the stairs of the almost 50 meter high tower. The area around the building is free of trees, once the premises were filled with large antennae, held in place with wires. Fascinating stuff. When I was there in 2011 I took a lot of pictures.

Impressive. Concrete. Ominous perhaps, in this light, but impressive nevertheless.

The relief above the entrance show a calling face in the middle
and two stauettes hearing on either side.

A big brass (?) relief in the entrance hall with a complete story in art deco typeface.

One of the staircases. All details are meticulously designed. Look at that entrance hall floor.

The floor in the hall. The tiled pattern is not perfect, it has an intentional flaw somewhere.
Once filled with large machines, the room now is used for cultural events. 

Anyway, you will get the point, I love this building. So you can imagine I was glad to find a (free!) paper model of it. So, let's cut to the build itself.

The model still is available (as of 30-05-2020) on the Kootwijk site. One little problem: it is A2. Super huge, 4x A4. I managed to split it into 4 easy to print A4 sections. I then printed the model two pages on 1 A4, so it was even smaller. I measured it and it now is about 1/900. 'My' tower measures 5,3 cm and the real one is 48m.

Unfortunately for you all, I didn't make that much of an effort to document the build. Sorry. I was on a roll and this was supposed to be an inbetweenie anyway. And it only took me just over one and a half day of calmly assembling parts.

The model is very well designed. The only thing I found confusing were the instructions, that were scattered all over the sheets, without any apparent logic behind it all. But well, okay, I have managed worse and I know I should read the instructions forst before glueing. I made some mistakes but I printed the model twice anyway so there was no problem. The reason to print it twice was because I wanted to detail the model a little further by cutting out windows and raising façades.

The first thing was the tower. I removed the long vertical windows and glued the second print behind the slits. I also doubled up the entrance façade and glued it on the original print to suggest some more depth. I removed the door from the top layer to keep the door a little more recessed.

The top of the tower was the trickiest, especially in this scale. The edges have to be cut in and folded inward. That part of the instructions is on the base plate. Weird. it was easy to overlook. I edge glued the top dome, and added small parts cut from grey paper to cover up some unwanted holes that shouldnt've been there right below the dome.

I continued cutting out all windows, even the littlest ones on the hall roof, and replaced them with the ones of the other print glued behind the holes. It is not immediately noticeable as such, but you do get a feel of more detail.

The designer, Hanneke Weijman, did a very nice job in drawing the building and creating the separate segments. Even in this tiny scale, the fit is very good.

I detailed the square in front of the radio cathedral by using the concrete pond from the second print, glueing it on a thin layer of cardboard and removing the 'water' to suggest a bassin. I then used a thin layer of transparent acrylic gloss paint to suggest water in the pond. Even the stairs on both sides of the pond were given a little more depth.

The model gives you the option of adding the buttresses alongside the outside of the hall but they are a bit 2D. I quadrupled up 250g grey card and cut very small long triangles to fill up the empty spaces behind the paper structure. perhaps you can see what I meant when looking at the photos below.

Because well, like I said, I haven't made photos during this build. I can only give you the result. And that is here, in 21 photos!

Well, that's about it. I really like this small diorama, especially because I have ben there and I realy appreciste this building. It is quite surreal seeing it there, in that empty plain in the woods. It really is recommended for a visit if you are in the neighbourhood, you should try and go there.

Up next is finishing off the Spitfire and making a nice build report of it and then it's back to the Space Shuttle. I am looking forward to it!

Until then, thanks for stopping by and having a look.

--PK