AVRO Studios is a building complex and

national heritage site A national heritage site is a heritage site having a value that has been registered by a governmental agency as being of national importance to the cultural heritage or history of that country. Usually such sites are listed in a heritage regis ...

Hilversum Hilversum () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is ...

, where the radio and TV studios and the head office of the Dutch public broadcasting association

AVRO Avro (an initialism of the founder's name) was a British aircraft manufacturer. Its designs include the Avro 504, used as a trainer in the First World War, the Avro Lancaster, one of the pre-eminent bombers of the Second World War, and the d ...

(Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep or "General Association of Radio Broadcasting") were located until 2000. The buildings have since been used by other companies for different purposes.

History

The studios were built between 1934 and 1940 according to plans by the architects and . The interior was by Alexander Bodon, who, among other things, designed the seats in the orchestra hall. The smaller studio 1 is located below studio 2, separated by Melkpad street. Studio 1 from 1936 (with an added

gatehouse A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the most ...

, coffee room and office wing from 1940) and Studio 2 from 1940 have been protected as national monuments since 2002. Both studios are connected by an underground tunnel. The last extension of the studies was carried out from 1968 to 1972 with the so-called TV-Flat and was converted into a medical center, which opened in November 2012. Following the sale by AVRO in 2004, the television production company Blue Circle (the Dutch subsidiary of the media company

FremantleMedia Fremantle Limited (), formerly FremantleMedia, is a British multinational television production and distribution company based in London. The company was founded as Pearson Television in 1993 when publishing and education company Pearson ...

) resided in Studio 2 before moving to Amsterdam. In 2000, AVRO, KRO and

NCRV NCRV (Nederlandse Christelijke Radio Vereniging) (English: Dutch Christian Radio Association) was a public radio and television broadcaster in the Netherlands, mostly transmitting on NPO 1 and NPO 2. On 1 January 2014, NCRV merged with KRO to f ...

moved into new premises, the building. In July 2002, the two studio complexes were registered as

Rijksmonument A (, ) is a national heritage site of the Netherlands, listed by the agency Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) acting for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. At the end of February 2015, the Netherlands had 61,822 l ...

(No. 522700 and No. 522701) because they are “functional buildings with an expressionist design” and “are exemplary for their construction period”. The AVRO studio complex has been recreated in miniature (scale 1 to 25) in the miniature city of

Madurodam Madurodam () is a miniature park and tourist attraction in the Scheveningen district of The Hague in the Netherlands. It is home to a range of 1:25 scale model replicas of famous Dutch landmarks, historical cities and large developments. The par ...

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

Concert organ

Studio 1 housed the original , which was played by solo organist from 1937 until his retirement in 1967. The organ, one of the largest original

theater organ A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films from the 1900s to the 1920s. Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements of ...

s in the Netherlands, was removed in 2004 after the studios were sold and was put into storage in

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

for the next 15 years. It was renamed in tribute after the organist in 2013 when restoration work began in

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 160,783. It is the capital of ...

. It was rebuilt in 2019 and found a new home in Studio 1 of the (Broadcasting Music Centre; NMBC), the former VARA studios, where a place had already been made available from the start for the Radio Concert Organ that had been bought from the BBC, which was never installed there. After many setbacks, the AVRO Concert Organ was finally taken into use in December 2019 under the new name 'Pierre Palla Concert Organ'.

References

External links

{{S-end Rijksmonuments in North Holland Buildings and structures in North Holland Mass media in Hilversum Office buildings completed in 1936 1936 establishments in the Netherlands Television studios 20th-century architecture in the Netherlands

History

Concert organ

See also

References

External links