Smoldering Speelhuis

BOLLES+WILSON, whose City Library Helmond I featured previously, informed me yesterday that the nearby 't Speelhuis (Playhouse) designed by Piet Blom in the 1970swas burned down in a recent fire. Their library was not touched by the fire, but some of Blom's adjacent Tree Houses were damaged. Below are some screenshots from a video at ED.nl.



Even though a lot of news articles about the fire can be found on Google News, they are just about all in Dutch, so the details are filtered by Google's crude translation. Most of what I can glean focuses on whether to rebuild Blom's design -- a notable structure that is echoed in his more well-known Cubic Houses in Rotterdam -- or build a larger theater elsewhere. About a week after the fire nothing is certain, not even the cause of the blaze.

Here is a photo from the web page of 't Speelhuis:



And I did finally find an English-language account of the fire at Foxcrawl.com with more video and photos (including below). Click over for more information, whatever little there is, on the unfortunate fire.


[Aerial view of Helmond's "Speelhuis" fire disaster which threatened also the cube houses around. Foto:Peter Warmerdam | image source]