Dudok's design for the Town Hall at Hilversum has been described as having an "atmosphere of friendly dignity". It is arranged as a collection of simple block masses around a square courtyard, with the main entrance approached through a long walkway down one side, overlooking the water.

Pictures of the Town Hall generally show it in a state of pristine emptiness. It was evidently designed to be set apart from other buildings, in a wide expanse of lawn. This means that incidental users are few: the people who arrive here will generally be limited to the people who have come with a legitimate reason to enter the Town Hall. Given that, the location of the main entrance, on the side and away from what might be seen as the front, forces all these users along a prescribed journey. The use of the body of water beside this path somehow protects it: since people cannot walk on the water, the water creates a boundary without seeming to enclose the space. Thus, there is a clear sense of threshold, without any sense of confinement.

The courtyard of the Town Hall is, I think, a space into which no-one has any reason to go. It is a hard surface relieved only by the fountain. It has only one primary entrance with no processional relationship with either the entrance vestibule or any of the more public rooms within the complex. The two secondary entrances are placed unobtrusively in corners.

That being said, the courtyard is evidently more for viewing than for using. The fountain takes up a very large portion of the courtyard, so that people moving through the courtyard from one entrance to another must walk around it. One side of the courtyard is taken up by the library on one floor and the cafeteria on the floor above. The fountain touches the wall of these rooms directly, so there's no walking space in the courtyard between the rooms and the fountain. From these rooms, the courtyard would probably be seen as a fountain with some hard space around the far sides, reflecting sunlight into the windows of the room. In that sense, the courtyard is "used" even though it does not encourage entry.

The single-loaded corridors down two sides of the courtyard are also quite pleasant, as the windows giving onto the courtyard provide light into what would have been nothing more than a transitional movement space.

The placement of the entrance vestibule, asymmetrically at one corner of the square ring formed by the corridors surrounding the courtyard, is interesting: Moving from the entrance into corridors, one's immediate impression is that of a path leading onwards, straight ahead from one's position. This marks it as the obvious route to take. Placing the vestibule at the middle of one of these corridors, as I would have been tempted to do, would have forced the user into making a choice of going left or right, a dilemma which would have made the corridors less welcoming.

Source:

Magnee, R. M. H.. Willem M. Dudok. Amsterdam: Lectura Architectonica, 1955.