1.
Glaspaleis
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The Glaspaleis is a modernist building in Heerlen, Netherlands, built in 1935. Formerly a fashion house and department store, Schunck, it is now the centre of the city. The original name was Modehuis Schunck, but it was soon nicknamed Glaspaleis, the architectural style is largely according to what is in the Netherlands known as het Nieuwe Bouwen, which corresponds roughly to Modernism, Bauhaus and International style. In 2004, it won the first Bouwfonds Award in the category Vital Monuments, in 2005, it won the Nederlandse Bouwprijs in the Projects category. In 2005, it won the Nationale Renovatieprijs in the Utiliteitsbouw category. They were especially inspired by the architecture of a department store in Nantes, France, Les Grands Magasins Decré, another source of inspiration for Peutz was the 1930 Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, a classical example of this style at the time. But the City council gave the go ahead, apart from a few minor points, the job was given to Maastrichtse Betonijzerbouw P. Knols, who had made the lowest bid at 184,500 guilders. The market used to be at the Church Square, but when it moved to the new Market Square, the shop lost its strategic location, which was one reason for the move. Vroom en Dreesman never made use of the house, which was located in between the old shop and the new Glaspaleis, leaving it to decay and it remained an eyesore until well after World War II. Schunck only managed to buy it in 1960, for the exorbitant price of 2.000.000 guilders, the buildings to the South have since been torn down, creating the much larger Pancratius Square. The section to the West was given to the City and cleared, as a result, the Glaspaleis is now completely free-standing. The building to the East has been replaced by the music school annex, the result was a structure of stacked and covered hanging markets, protected against the elements by the freestanding glass encasing on three sides. The Glaspaleis is an example of early modern architecture, made of glass, steel. Each floor has about 30 mushroom-shaped pillars, ever narrower as one goes up the floors, there is no front as such - this is only defined by the fact that one side faces the market square. At the moment the building is completely free-standing, almost surrounded by three squares, at seven floors and a height of 26.5 m, it was at the time the tallest building in Heerlen. It has been called a palace for the people, especially for the miners, the pillars are mushroom-shaped for two reasons. The first is utilitarian, the floors were constructed beamless for better daylighting and, thus and this has the additional advantage of simplifying the placing and moving of cables and lighting fixtures. And the mushroom shapes give an impression of greater height, the second, constructional, advantage is that the steel bundle reinforcement in two directions makes the structure equally rigid in all directions
2.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
3.
Architecture
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Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures. Architectural works, in the form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements, Architecture can mean, A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures. The art and science of designing buildings and nonbuilding structures, the style of design and method of construction of buildings and other physical structures. A unifying or coherent form or structure Knowledge of art, science, technology, the design activity of the architect, from the macro-level to the micro-level. The practice of the architect, where architecture means offering or rendering services in connection with the design and construction of buildings. The earliest surviving work on the subject of architecture is De architectura. According to Vitruvius, a building should satisfy the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, commonly known by the original translation – firmness, commodity. An equivalent in modern English would be, Durability – a building should stand up robustly, utility – it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used. Beauty – it should be aesthetically pleasing, according to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible. Leon Battista Alberti, who elaborates on the ideas of Vitruvius in his treatise, De Re Aedificatoria, saw beauty primarily as a matter of proportion, for Alberti, the rules of proportion were those that governed the idealised human figure, the Golden mean. The most important aspect of beauty was, therefore, an inherent part of an object, rather than something applied superficially, Gothic architecture, Pugin believed, was the only true Christian form of architecture. The 19th-century English art critic, John Ruskin, in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, Architecture was the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by men. That the sight of them contributes to his health, power. For Ruskin, the aesthetic was of overriding significance and his work goes on to state that a building is not truly a work of architecture unless it is in some way adorned. For Ruskin, a well-constructed, well-proportioned, functional building needed string courses or rustication, but suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say, This is beautiful, le Corbusiers contemporary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. The notable 19th-century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design, function came to be seen as encompassing all criteria of the use, perception and enjoyment of a building, not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural
4.
Uithuizen
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Uithuizen is a village in the Dutch province of Groningen. It is located in the municipality of Eemsmond, Uithuizen was a separate municipality until 1979, when it became part of Hefshuizen. May 172008, Cardinal Simonis opened the Trail of St James, connecting Uithuizen to Hasselt, Le Puy en Velay, in the village is a borg called the Menkemaborg. Menkemaborg at Uithuizen is a 14th-century, brick-built country house, which was altered around 1700. The Alberda family, the 18th-century occupants, commissioned artists to decorate the interior with impressive chimney-pieces carved with baroque ornaments, the Menkemaborg and its gardens are open to the public. Seth Gaaikema, cabaret artist and writer Uithuizen hosted the finish of stage 4 at the 2013 Energiewacht Tour, J. Kuyper, Gemeente Atlas van Nederland, 1865-1870, Uithuizen. Map of the municipality, around 1868. Site of Windmill De liefde Menkemaborg
5.
Groningen (province)
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Groningen is the northeasternmost province of the Netherlands. It borders on Friesland to the west, Drenthe to the south, the German state of Niedersachsen to the east, in 2014, it had a population of 582,640 and a total area of 2,960 km2. The area was part of Frisia, the Frankish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Dutch Republic. In the 14th century, the city of Groningen became a member of the Hanseatic League, the capital of the province and the seat of the provincial government is the city of Groningen. Since 2016, René Paas has been the Kings Commissioner in the province, a coalition of the Labour Party, Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, Democrats 66, and ChristianUnion forms the executive branch. The province is divided into 23 municipalities, the land is mainly used for agriculture. There are sea ports in Delfzijl and Eemshaven, the Groningen gas field was discovered in 1959. The province is home to the University of Groningen and Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen was originally a part of Frisia. It became a part of the Frankish Empire around 785, charlemagne assigned the Christianization of this new possession to Ludger. In the 11th century, the city of Groningen was a village in Drenthe that belonged to the Bishopric of Utrecht, during the Middle Ages, central control was remote, and the city of Groningen acted as a city-state, exerting a dominating influence on the surrounding Ommelanden. In the 14th century, Groningen became one of the towns within the Hanseatic League, in the years after, Groningen expanded its influence. At its peak almost all of the current province Friesland was under the influence, shortly before 1498, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor gave Groningen and Friesland to Albert III, Duke of Saxony, who could however not establish permanent control. In 1514/15 Groningen came to the Duchy of Guelders, and in 1536 as the Lordship of Groningen to the Habsburg Netherlands, in 1594, Groningen was conquered by the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, precursor state of the Netherlands, to which it belonged henceforth. During World War II, the Netherlands were occupied by Nazi Germany, in May 1945, another 3,000 German soldiers were captured in the Battle of Delfzijl by the 5th Canadian Division, after which all of the northern provinces were liberated. East Groningen was the scene of a particularly fierce class struggle in the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps not coincidentally, Groningen boasts the only municipality where the Communist Party of the Netherlands has ever had a mayor. The northernmost point of the Netherlands is on Rottumerplaat at 53°33′18″N 6°28′41″E, Groningen is the 7th largest province of the Netherlands. It has an area of 2,960 km2, with 2,325 km2 of land and 635 km2 of water. About 80% of the land or 1,876 km2 is used for agriculture
6.
Kerkrade
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Kerkrade is a town and a municipality in the southeast of Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands. Kerkrade is the half of a divided city, it was part of the German town of Herzogenrath until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 drew the current Dutch-German border. The two towns, including outlying suburban settlements, have a population approaching 100,000, of which nearly 47,000 in Kerkrade, the history of Kerkrade is closely linked with that of the adjacent town of Herzogenrath, just across the German border. Herzogenrath began as a settlement, called Rode, near the river Worm in the 11th century, in 1104 Augustinian monks founded an abbey, called Kloosterrade, to the west of this settlement. It was called s-Hertogenrode or s-Hertogenrade after the duchy of Brabant took control over the region, as is the case for many parts of the Southern Netherlands, the place changed hands several times in the last few centuries. It was under Spanish control from 1661, Austrian between 1713 and 1785 and French between 1795 and 1813, in 1815, when the kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, the border was drawn through Herzogenrath, the western part being Kerkrade. In the 18th century the monks of Rolduc began small-scale coal mines, when the Willem Sophia mine was opened around 1900, the town grew even more rapidly, absorbing old villages like Chèvremont. In the decades following 1960, all the mines in Limburg were closed, one of the oldest buildings in the municipality is Erenstein, a castle the origins of which lie in the 14th century. One part of the border between the Netherlands and Germany runs along the middle of the street Nieuwstraat/Neustraße, there was a separate 2-way road on each side, and cars had to pass through the official crossing points, but pedestrians could readily step over the wall. In 1995, the wall was removed completely as part of the new Schengen Area agreement, Nieuwstraat/Neustraße is now a single two-way road, with the extra space now occupied with trees and bicycle lanes. The border is unmarked, and is crossed even when going round a roundabout or overtaking a vehicle, the two towns now share some of their public services, and promote themselves as a binational City of Eurode for economic development purposes. Kerkrades outlying neighborhoods and housing developments include, Every fourth year the World Music Contest, a competition for amateur, professional, also, for the last three years, the Drum Corps Europe championships have been held here. The building of a dam in the Anstel, a brook flowing west of Kerkrade, has led to the formation of a reservoir with an area of about 20 ha and this and its surroundings are very rich in flora and fauna. It is the reservoir in the Netherlands
7.
Civil engineering
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Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering, Civil engineering takes place in the public sector from municipal through to national governments, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies. Engineering has been an aspect of life since the beginnings of human existence, during this time, transportation became increasingly important leading to the development of the wheel and sailing. The construction of pyramids in Egypt were some of the first instances of large structure constructions, the Romans developed civil structures throughout their empire, including especially aqueducts, insulae, harbors, bridges, dams and roads. In the 18th century, the civil engineering was coined to incorporate all things civilian as opposed to military engineering. The first self-proclaimed civil engineer was John Smeaton, who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse, in 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of the profession who met informally over dinner. Though there was evidence of some meetings, it was little more than a social society. In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London, the institution received a Royal Charter in 1828, formally recognising civil engineering as a profession. The first private college to teach engineering in the United States was Norwich University. The first degree in engineering in the United States was awarded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1835. The first such degree to be awarded to a woman was granted by Cornell University to Nora Stanton Blatch in 1905, throughout ancient and medieval history most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans, such as stonemasons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Knowledge was retained in guilds and seldom supplanted by advances, structures, roads and infrastructure that existed were repetitive, and increases in scale were incremental. Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, used arithmetic in the 7th century AD, based on Hindu-Arabic numerals, Civil engineers typically possess an academic degree in civil engineering. The length of study is three to five years, and the degree is designated as a bachelor of engineering. The curriculum generally includes classes in physics, mathematics, project management, design, after taking basic courses in most sub-disciplines of civil engineering, they move onto specialize in one or more sub-disciplines at advanced levels. In most countries, a degree in engineering represents the first step towards professional certification. After completing a degree program, the engineer must satisfy a range of requirements before being certified. Once certified, the engineer is designated as a engineer, a chartered engineer
8.
Delft
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Delft is a city and a municipality in the Netherlands. It is located in the province of South Holland, to the north of Rotterdam, the city of Delft came into being aside a canal, the Delf, which comes from the word delven, meaning delving or digging, and led to the name Delft. It presumably started around the 11th century as a landlord court, from a rural village in the early Middle Ages, Delft developed to a city, that in the 13th century received its charter. The towns association with the House of Orange started when William of Orange, nicknamed William the Silent, at the time he was the leader of growing national Dutch resistance against Spanish occupation, known as the Eighty Years War. By then Delft was one of the cities of Holland. An attack by Spanish forces in October of that year was repelled, after the Act of Abjuration was proclaimed in 1581, Delft became the de facto capital of the newly independent Netherlands, as the seat of the Prince of Orange. When William was shot dead in 1584, by Balthazar Gerards in the hall of the Prinsenhof, therefore, he was buried in the Delft Nieuwe Kerk, starting a tradition for the House of Orange that has continued to the present day. The Delft Explosion, also known in history as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred on 12 October 1654 when a gunpowder store exploded, over a hundred people were killed and thousands were wounded. About 30 tonnes of gunpowder were stored in barrels in a magazine in a former Clarissen convent in the Doelenkwartier district, cornelis Soetens, the keeper of the magazine, opened the store to check a sample of the powder and a huge explosion followed. Luckily, many citizens were away, visiting a market in Schiedam or a fair in The Hague, Delft artist Egbert van der Poel painted several pictures of Delft showing the devastation. Historical buildings and other sights of interest include, Oude Kerk, buried here, Piet Hein, Johannes Vermeer, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. Nieuwe Kerk, constructed between 1381 and 1496 and it contains the Dutch royal familys burial vault, which between funerals is sealed with a 5,000 kg cover stone. A statue of Hugo Grotius made by Franciscus Leonardus Stracké in 1886 and this is the only remaining gate of the old city walls. The Gemeenlandshuis Delfland, or Huyterhuis, built in 1505, which has housed the Delfland regional water authority since 1645, the Vermeer Centre in the rebuilt Guild house of St. Luke. Windmill De Roos, a mill built c.1760. Restored to working order in 2013, another windmill that formerly stood in Delft, Het Fortuyn, was dismantled in 1917 and re-erected at the Netherlands Open Air Museum, Arnhem, Gelderland in 1920. Delft is well known for the Delft pottery ceramic products which were styled on the imported Chinese porcelain of the 17th century, the city had an early start in this area since it was a home port of the Dutch East India Company. It can still be seen at the pottery factories De Koninklijke Porceleyne Fles, the painter Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft
9.
Coal mining
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Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore, in the United Kingdom and South Africa a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine a pit, the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, colliery generally refers to a coal mine. In the United States colliery has been used to describe a coal mine operation, Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks, small-scale mining of surface deposits dates back thousands of years. For example, in Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting most of the major coalfields by the late 2nd century AD. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century and later spread to continental Europe, international trade expanded rapidly when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships. Until the late nineteenth century coal was mined using a pick and shovel. Coal-cutting machines were introduced in the 1880s, by 1912, surface mining was conducted with steam shovels designed for coal mining. The most economical method of extraction from coal seams depends on the depth and quality of the seams. Coal mining processes are differentiated by whether they operate on the surface or underground, many coals extracted from both surface and underground mines require washing in a coal preparation plant. Surface mining and deep underground mining are the two methods of mining. Coal that occurs at depths of 180 to 300 ft are usually deep mined, for example, some western U. S. coal that occur at depths in excess of 200 ft are mined by the open pit methods, due to thickness of the seam 60–90 feet. Coals occurring below 300 ft are usually deep mined, However, there are open pit mining operations working on coal seams up to 1000–1500 feet below ground level, for instance Tagebau Hambach in Germany. When coal seams are near the surface, it may be economical to extract the coal using open cut mining methods, open cast coal mining recovers a greater proportion of the coal deposit than underground methods, as more of the coal seams in the strata may be exploited. In this mining method, explosives are first used in order to break through the surface or overburden, the overburden is then removed by draglines or by shovel and truck. Once the coal seam is exposed, it is drilled, fractured, the coal is then loaded onto large trucks or conveyors for transport to either the coal preparation plant or directly to where it will be used
10.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
11.
Bauhaus
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The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Nonetheless, it was founded with the idea of creating a work of art in which all arts, including architecture. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design, the Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Although the school was closed, the continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany. The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated, Gropius did not share these radical views, thus, the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the body on questions of design in Germany. The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen, beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. Behrens was a member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer worked for him in this period. The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity, beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a minimal dwelling written into the new Weimar Constitution, ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, the Vkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization, the two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Vkhutemas was a school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised outside the Soviet Union. With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. In addition, El Lissitzkys book Russia, an Architecture for World Revolution published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects there. The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. Its roots lay in the arts and crafts founded by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906
12.
Pancratiuskerk
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The Pancratiuskerk is a Roman Catholic church in Heerlen in the Netherlands. Although no written sources about the origin of the church are known, however, since this study the age of both Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebasiliek and the church of Rolduc have been pushed back two centuries. It is suggested that the building of the Pancratiuskerk also started earlier and it is believed that the building was commissioned by the counts of Ahr-Hochstaden in the Rhineland, then the lords of Heerlen. The current bell tower was built in 1394, and for the size of the church at that time was of a heavy construction. The tower served as part of the mechanism for the Landsfort Herle. From 1632 till 1836 the Pancratiuskerk served as a church for both Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants obtained their own church in 1836 and the arrangement ended, a stair tower, located on the south side of the bell tower was built in 1862. Between 1901 and 1903 Joseph Cuypers renovated and enlarged the church, the choir was demolished and replaced by a new eastern part, with a transept, crossing tower and a new choir, all in neo-romanesque style and using marl stone. Frits Peutz, best known for the Glaspaleis located on the same square, in 1960 a sacristy and a baptistry were built on the south side. The current interior is a mixture of a created by Pierre Cuypers in 1880. Frescoes created by Charles Eyck decorate parts of the ceiling, the stained glass windows dating from between 1947 until the 1960s was created by Eugène Laudy and include Saint Nicholas, Saint Andrew, Saint Barbara, and Saint Servatius. The building is a cruciform basilica in a combination of Romanesque and Neoromanesque styles
