Having experimented with mud, cement, worked stone and stabilized soil brick Van Stigt created a distinct architectural oeuvre in the Dogon Valley, one that, without any doubt, will be remembered as Van Stigts’ heritage for many generations to come.
Joop van Stigt (1934-2011)
On 4th November Joop van Stigt passed away after a short illness. A few weeks ago he was on a Dogon roof installing a solar panel. Joop died in the harness as we say in Dutch, and would he have lived for another twenty-odd years – as we all had hoped for and expected – he still would be building in Mali.
In last September, as coincidence wants it, Joop’s work for SDO (Stichting Dogon Onderwijs – Foundation Education Dogon) since 1995, was published. In this book Beyond Construction (2011) in English translation and Plus que Construire in French translation, roughly covering the last third of his life, his incredible energy, skills and generousness transpire from each page. Joop Van Stigt was a man of many words, but contrary to what often applies to people of many words, he was also a man of many deeds : ‘building his a verb’ as he used to say.
Before moving to his beloved Dogon valley in Mali, he erected hundreds and hundreds of dwellings and other buildings in the Netherlands in the humane tradition of the Structuralists of the 1960ies. His faithfulness to his teacher and first employer Aldo van Eyck can be easily traced in his oeuvre, and van Eyck contaminated him with his love for the Dogon culture as early as 1972. After Aldo van Eyck and Herman Haan, Joop van Stigt is another amongst the key representatives of the first Dutch Dogon-generation of architects that left this world. The first generation, because a new generation emerged meanwhile. Joop’s son architect Jurriaan van Stigt and daughter Jacqueline van Leeuwen, but also architect Pierre Maas and others are inspiring a bunch of young Dutch architects and researchers who will certainly continue Joop’s work as they have been addicted by the same Dogon-virus.
After his first Dogon valley school in Amani in 1995 he realized over forty projects in tandem with Amatigue Dara, a teacher turned into a builder: schools, restoration projects, residences, offices, libraries, dams, clinics, shallow wells and the regional community hall in Sévaré. He wrote and published ‘Dogon Art Anthropology Culture’ (1999) and founded the above mentioned NGO Stichting Dogon Onderwijs (SDO), all with the managerial support of his equally tireless wife Gonnie. The large majority of his Dogon projects were carried out after his retirement as principal of his architectural practice in Amsterdam and as professor at Delft University of Technology. Instead of ‘sitting behind the geraniums’ – as they say in Dutch for the retiree enjoying a well deserved rest after lifelong toil and labor - he became a field worker in Africa. He experimented with mud, cement, worked stone and stabilized soil brick and with these materials he created a distinct architectural oeuvre in the Dogon Valley, that, without any doubt, will be remembered as Van Stigts’ heritage for many generations to come. It goes without saying that his prolific production and altruism earned him great friends and admiration. He was decorated a couple of times in Africa and the Netherlands and Amatigue Dara adopted Joop as his ‘current father’.
Joop van Stigt, the Dutch Baobab, is no more.
Antoni S Folkers 8th November 2011
