Plan Zuid: brick that was meant to lift you
The Amsterdam School at full volume — De Dageraad, Berlage's avenues, and a 1932 skyscraper twelve storeys tall. Walked and written by the editor.

1. P.L. Takstraat
Start at the heart of De Dageraad. Michel de Klerk shaped this frontage — brick that swells and curls where brick has no business doing either. Stand at the corner and look up; the facade reaches and pulls back as it rises.

2. Coöperatiehof
Step through into Piet Kramer's courtyard, built 1925–1927 for a housing cooperative. A quiet enclosed hof with the old meeting hall at its end. You're standing inside an idea about how workers should be housed — generously, on purpose.

3. Henriëtte Ronnerplein
One of the small squares the Amsterdam School wrapped its housing around. Sit on the green for a moment; the buildings are doing all the talking and they reward a slow look.

4. Vrijheidslaan
Berlage's idea of a grand workers' boulevard — a wide avenue lined with four-storey blocks, meant as ceremony for ordinary people. Walk down the middle of it if the trams allow; that's how it was drawn to be read.

5. De Wolkenkrabber, Victorieplein
J.F. Staal's 1932 'skyscraper' — twelve storeys, which made it the tallest residential building in the country and earned the nickname. Berlage's monument stands on the square below it. The two together are the whole point of Plan Zuid in one view.

6. Amstelkanaal bridges
Piet Kramer designed dozens of bridges across these canals, each one different, each one sculpted brick and wrought iron. Find one and look at the abutments — even the bridges were meant to lift you. The tram home is back on Victorieplein.

Plan Zuid: brick that was meant to lift you