Missionary architect Pieter Simon Djikstra and his Dutch works

Abstract

In South Africa, the Dutch architect P.S. Dijkstra/ Dykstra (1884-1968) is considered an important innovator in Protestant church design. Yet his work gets barely a mention in Dutch historiography. His early twentieth-century oeuvre is especially interesting from a cultural-historical point of view, because it is closely linked to the Reformed zuil (pillar: one of the diverse socio-culturally cohesive groups based on a specific worldview that founded their own institutions, varying from newspapers to housing corporations and suchlike).