Ams­ter­dam offers a wealth of clas­si­cal mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Espe­cial­ly the south of the city is a true open-air muse­um of mod­ernist archi­tec­ture, from Berlage’s Plan Zuid to Van Eyck’s orphanage.

At the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, H.P. Berlage was appoint­ed by the Ams­ter­dam city coun­cil to design a plan for a city exten­sion in the south of the city. Most build­ings were designed by archi­tects of the expres­sion­ist Ams­ter­dam School, but there are also sev­er­al exam­ples of func­tion­al­ist archi­tec­ture – most promi­nent­ly the Open Air School by Duik­er. In the 1950s, Struc­tural­ism took over from Func­tion­al­ism in the Nether­lands. With his design for an orphan­age which could accom­mo­date 125 chil­dren, Aldo van Eyck cre­at­ed an archi­tec­tur­al icon in 1960.