Another Architecture N°60 February — March 2016

How Odile Decq realized a

museum in China over Spe

New Dutch train stations

turn tradition upside down

What if your architecture

competition yields 1,700 entries?

Reinier de Graaf: ‘I no longer

dislike my profession’

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GilBartolomé marries digital
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 Mark 60 Feb — Mar 2016 005

Plan
034

012 Notice Board

022 Cross Section

024 Diener & Diener — Martin Steinmann Aarau

026 Mecanoo Haarlemmermeer
028 AP Atelier Ostrava
030 MVRDV Amsterdam
032 ARX Abrantes
034 Atelier Tekuto Too
036 Schmidt Hammer Lassen e Hague
038 Degelo Freiburg
040 SUB Jakarta
Atelier Tekuto
042 Infographic House in Too
Photo Atelier Tekuto
044 MX_SI Granada
046 WMR Matanzas
048 Shi Kerkrade
050 Brenac & Gonzalez Saint-Ouen
052 Meili Peter Hannover 074
054 Lumo South Funen Archipelago

056 Pers ective

New Train Stations in e Netherlands

058 Introduction
062 Benthem Crouwel, Meyer & Van Schooten
Architecten and West 8 have given
Roerdam an iconic ci gate.
074 UNStudio’s station in Arnhem is all about
the spectacular ‘twist’ that ties together
the pedestrian flows.
086 Koen van Velsen’s station in Breda
wants to be part of the ci.
098 Jan Benthem worked on four of the UNStudio
Station in Arnhem
six major new stations in the Netherlands. Photo Huon+Crow
006 Mark 60 Feb — Mar 2016

104 Lon Section

106 GilBartolomé used local 154

crasmanship to connect a villa
to both the mountains and the sea.
116 KWK Promes takes the weekend
house to an upper level.
124 e New Hollandic Water
Line is an ingenious, eighteenth-
century defence system that has
had new life breathed into it by the
Waterliniemuseum Fort bij Vechten.
142 Malcolm Reading organizes
architecture competitions. ‘We’re
Alex McDowell
looking for a building that will be Photo 5D Global Studio

forever linked with the moment

a career was made.’
146 Peter Haimerl renovated and
remodelled a small farm close to
Munich.
154 Alex McDowell talks about his 116
practice of world building and his
first steps into architecture and
urban planning in the real world.
160 Odile Decq managed to realize
a museum in Nanjing over Spe.
168 TNA’s latest house in Too is
closely linked to the street.
176 Reinier de Graaf talks about the
role of reading and writing within
the architect’s office.

180 Tools

192 Exit

KWK Promes
House in Brenna
Photo Olo Studio
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008 Mark 60 Feb — Mar 2016

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 012

Notice
Mark 60

Board
 Notice Board 013

‘e intimac
found in a
low-rise
office
buildin
is stacked
into a
Kim Herforth Nielsen on
3XN’s Quay Quarter Tower
in Sydney, page 015

hi h rise’
014 Mark 60 Notice Board

2
 015

1 Mountain Hut Oberholz

Obereen–Italy
Peter Pichler and Pavol Mikolajcak
— A restaurant on a ski slope at
an altitude of 2,000 m
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2016
peterpichler.eu

2 Zalando Headquarters
Berlin–Germany
Henn
— Two seven-storey buildings
that provide some 42,000 m² of
office space for 2,700 employees
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2017
henn.com

4
3 Ci Hall
Sandnes–Norway
5
KAMJZ
— Assembly hall, offices and
citizen services for the ci of
Sandnes
Competition entry
kamjz.com

4 Polish House
Gródek nad Dunajcem–Poland
BXBstudio Bogusław Barnaś
— A modern interpretation of the
traditional Polish house
Design proposal
bxbstudio.com

5 Quay Quarter Tower

Sydney–Australia
3XN Architects
— A 200-m-high office tower,
divided into five separate volumes
with an atrium at the base of each
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion undisclosed
.3xn.com
016 Mark 60 Notice Board

1 Papalote Children’s 1

Museum
Mexico Ci–Mexico
MX_SI and SPBR
— A museum that opens
up to the square, to create
continui between inside
and outside
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2017
mx-si.net
spbr.net

2 Altstadtquartier Büchel
Aachen–Germany
Chapman Taylor
— Master plan for a new
quarter in the heart of
Aachen’s town centre,
introducing new streets,
public squares, housing,
offices, retail and a
kindergarten to create a
thriving new district
Competition entry, 1st prize
chapmantaylor.com

3 SubZero Pavilion
Almere–Netherlands
DoepelStrijkers
— SubZero is a landmark
building where businesses,
students and knowledge
institutions will develop
crossover innovations
around the themes of
nutrition, health and
wellbeing for the Floriade 2

World Expo in 2022

Expected completion 2017
doepelstrijkers.com

4 Omnia
Sydney–Australia
Durbach Block Jaers
— 135 high-end luxury
apartments within a single
19-storey tower, which also
incorporates two levels of
high-end retail
Expected completion 2018
durbachblockjaers.com

5 Het Platform
Utrecht–Netherlands
VenhoevenCS
— A smart and sustainable
MicroCi for living,
working, eating, hanging
out and working out
Preliminary design, expected
completion 2018
venhoevencs.nl

Rendering MACINA digital film GmbH & Co. Kg

 017

Image courtesy of Greenland Australia

5
Rendering A2 Studio
018 Mark 60 Notice Board

3
 019

1 Ness Pier_e Gathering Place

Inverness–Scotland
KHBT (K. Huneck/B. Truempler)
and Sans Façon
— e Ness Pier will be a space
for celebrations and gathering,
but also for solitary observation;
as crowds gather, it slowly tilts
out over the river, stopping just
above the water level
Expected completion 2016
khbt.eu
sansfacon.org

2 T3 Tower
Beirut–Lebanon
Paralx
— Residential tower
Expected completion 2019
paralx.com

3 EPRDF Headquarters
Addis Ababa–Ethiopia
Michiel Clercx Architectuur
and S7 Architects, Consulting
Architects & Engineers
— Headquarters for the Ethiopian
political par EPRDF in the
government district of Addis
Ababa, including office nctions,
a conference centre and a library
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2017
michielclercx-architectuur.com

4 Longhua Art Museum & Library

Shenzhen–China
KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten
International
— e design consists of three
elements, which together form
an ensemble: an art museum,
5
a library and an archive
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion undisclosed
ksp-architekten.de

5 Offices with Terraces

Nice–France
6
NL*A
— This office building has had
its circulation space moved to
the façade, where it is dotted
with plants to provide shelter
from the sun
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2018
nlaparis.com

6 Forum Medicum
Lund–Sweden
Henning Larsen Architects
— A gathering place for
employees, students, researchers
and visitors of the Facul of
Medicine of Lund Universi
Invited competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2019
henninglarsen.com
020 Mark 60 Notice Board

1 Pencho Slaveykov
Public Library
Varna–Bulgaria
— Chybik+Kristof Architects
& Urban Designers
18,420-m2 library, with offices,
exhibition space and café
Competition entry
chybik-kristof.com

2 Air Traffic Control Tower

Istanbul–Turkey
RMJM
— 95-m-high air traffic
control tower of Istanbul New
Airport, due to open in 2018
Competition entry, shortlisted
rmjm.com

2
3 Neighbourhood of
Creativi and Knowledge
Toulon–France
— Corinne Vezzoni et associés
and Devillers et Associés
15,500 m2 dedicated to
creativi and knowledge,
including five new buildings
for higher education and
administration
Competition entry, 1st prize,
expected completion 2019
vezzoni-associes.com
agencedevillers.com

3
 021

Taiwan Taoyuan
International
Airport Terminal 3 2

Competition
In response to the current growth
in passenger volume, Taiwan
Taoyuan International Airport
will be expanded with a third
terminal that will be able to handle
an expected 45 million passengers
per year by 2042. Covering a
total floor area of 385,000 m2, the
terminal will offer state-of-the-art
technology, including self-check-in 3
counters and a bag-drop system.
Part of the plans are a series of
multi nctional buildings that
will connect the new structure to
the existing Terminal 2, offering
an additional 150,000 m2 office
space and 45,000 m2 for hotels.
Completion is scheduled for 2020.

1 1st prize 2 2nd prize 3 3rd prize

CECI Engineering
Consultants, Rogers Stirk
Harbour + Partners, Ove Arup
and Partners Hong Kong and
Fei & Cheng Associates
ceci.com.tw
Bio-Architecture Formosana,
UNStudio, April Yang Design
Studio and Taiwan Engineering
Consultants Group
bioarch.com.tw
Foster + Partners, Ric Liu
& Associates and MAA Group
Consulting Engineers
fosterandpartners.com
 022

Cross
Mark 60

Section
 Cross Section 023

‘All ood
architecture
hurts’
MVRDV’s clubhouse in Amsterdam
provokes a new aphorism, page 030
024
Reworking a Tree
Diener & Diener and Martin
Steinmann felled and reused a
Sequoia for a museum extension.
Text Katharina Marchal
Photos Christian Richters
At the inauguration of the new
town museum in Aarau, Roger
Diener recalls the words of Luigi
Snozzi, great theorist of Swiss
architecture: ‘Every architectural
intervention represents a
destruction. Destroy intelligently.’
Premise of the design was the
necessi to cut down a 120-year-
old giant redwood to build the
extension. is gave the Diener
& Diener team and architecture
theoretician Martin Steinmann
the idea to use the wood of the
tree in the design of the façade.
e commission went to artist
Josef Felix Müller from Sankt
Gallen. He used the felled tree to
make panels with representations.
He created 137 panels with life-
sized depictions of people, wielding
a chainsaw as if it were a quill
pen. ese reliefs, converted into
rubber matrixes, were used to
cast the concrete façade panels.
Roger Diener speaks of a ‘profound
architectonic theme that, like the
tower’s masonry, forms a whole,
Mark 60 Cross Section
0
but at the same time consists of
individual building blocks’.
e 13th-century fortified
tower, which has housed the town
museum since 1939, had become too
small, necessitating the extension.
e new entrance looks like a big
barn door, visitors enter the two-
storey entry hall from the sloping
plaza. Glass sliding doors can be
opened in the summer, turning the
hall into a kind of covered outdoor
space. To connect the buildings, the
floors of the extension correspond
in height to two of the tower’s
floors. A spacious staircase
nctions as a hinge between the
volumes. Concrete beams span
both the largest exhibition space
and the entry hall, which are
therefore free of columns. e
recessed glass upper floor, where
the offices are located, is also
striking. A pergola overgrown
with ivy has been placed at an
oblique angle, enveloping this
floor like a second skin.
dienerdiener.ch
Diener & Diener / Martin Steinmann Aarau — Switzerland 025

Josef Felix Müller carved 137 images

into wooden panels – from the tree
that was cut down for the extension –
which were subsequently turned into
moulds for the façade panels.
026 Mark 60 Cross Section
Mecanoo Haarlemmermeer — Netherlands
Stay in Place
Mecanoo updates Hilton
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
Text Arthur Wortmann
Photos Mecanoo
In the 1980s, the popular image
of the Netherlands’ main airport,
Schiphol, shied from that of
an operational air-traffic hub to
that of a genuine ci. e change
reflected the number of passengers
making use of the terminal: in
those days about 40,000 daily. In
the meantime, that number has
risen to 150,000. Occupying the
airport are over 560 businesses, and
approximately 64,000 people work
there. Many activities are contained
within the gigantic terminal
building, but its immediate
surroundings are also displaying
more and more features of a ci.
Only nobody lives there.
Recent policy has been
aimed at the pursuit of a higher
+1
quali of public spaces and
facilities: projects that help to
secure an airport’s competitive
position within the international
aviation industry. Today Schiphol
has a daycare centre, a fitness club
and a number of restaurants – even
some with outdoor terraces – for
people who, despite being encircled
by air traffic, like to feel as if they
are in central Amsterdam. e
highlight of this thrust towards
quali is the new Hilton.
In 1973 Hilton became the
first hotel at Schiphol. Now, right
next to the original 277-room
building (scheduled for demolition)
is a new hotel with 433 guest rooms
and 23 meeting rooms. A covered
walkway connects the hotel to the
027
airport terminal. Mecanoo – the
firm commissioned to design a
distinctive building that would be
a breath of fresh air waing
through the airport – took the brief
quite literally. e architects rotated
the hotel 45 degrees, a deviation
from Schiphol’s urban grid, and
opted for diagonally positioned,
diamond-shaped windows that
mask separations between floors
as well as between individual
rooms. e grand spectacle is
inside, where a 42-m-high atrium
forms the heart of the building.
Travellers with no interest in
watching planes land and take
off can book a room with a view
of this new metropolitan space.
mecanoo.nl
Typical Plan
028 Mark 60 Cross Section

AP Atelier designed Bolt: a 25-m-high

steel cylinder that rises from the top
of a denct 60-m-high blast rnace
in Lower Vítkovice, Ostrava. Visitors
can climb a 250-m-long walkway to
the pinnacle for a wonderl view of
the surroundings.
 AP Atelier Ostrava — Czech Republic
Full Circle
AP Atelier’s high-rise
extension crowns Ostrava’s
industrial heritage.
Section Plan
Text Adam Štěch
Photos Tomáš Souček
Since 2009, architect Josef
Pleskot of AP Atelier has been
working to revitalize Lower
Vítkovice, a former industrial
area of Ostrava. Pleskot’s master
plan is for a completely new ci
district that offers unexpected
historical, educational and
cultural experiences, all built on
now denct factory grounds.
Aer completing several
big projects – including the
multinctional concert hall Gong
and the World of Technology
Centre – he designed and realized
Bolt, a watchtower, café, club and
exhibition room set atop a former
blast rnace.
e design of the
structure, which crowns the
area’s manufacturing heritage,
was inspired by Russian
constructivism and the British
high-tech movement of the
1980s. Both sles evolved from
the principles of industrial
architecture. ‘Seeing the blast
rnace without smoke coming
out of it made me sad,’ says
Pleskot. ‘I decided to restore
an industrial dynamic to the
029
top of the rnace, at least in a
symbolic way.’ e tower’s helical
design immediately evokes an
image of Monument to the ird
International, an unrealized
project by Soviet architect and
artist Vladimir Tatlin.
Pleskot added a
25-m-high extension to the
original 60-m-high blast rnace
in the form of a spiralling steel
cylinder featuring a 250-m-long
walkway that leads to the top
of the building. Visitors are
invited to take a guided tour
of the rnace before having
refreshments in the café – which,
like the club, encircles a central
sha – and climbing the stairs to
the pinnacle or using the li. At
77.7 m above ground level, they
find themselves at the highest
point in Ostrava, overlooking a
formidable industrial complex
now recognized as a national
cultural monument. With his
latest addition to Lower Vítkovice,
Pleskot honours the raw beau
and expressive power of a golden
era in the history of Ostrava.
apatelier.cz
030
Red Rag
MVRDV does
the wave.
Text David Keuning
Photos Daria Scagliola & Stijn Brakkee
In this age of statutory tendering
procedures, RFPs and RFQs, you
might almost forget that some
commissions still come about
via friends or family. Even if
you’re known as Winy Maas. His
brother-in-law is friends with
the former chairman of a tennis
club on IJburg, a manmade island
on the east side of Amsterdam
where the keys to the first homes
were handed over 15 years ago.
e members wanted something
different to all that colourless
new-build for once, and the
chairman happened to know
an architect.
Maas derives just as
much pleasure from tackling
small-scale projects like this as
he does from landmark projects
like the Markthal market hall and
apartment complex in Roerdam,
as he explained during a viewing:
‘e older I get, the nicer I find
the architectural handiwork.’
For the tennis club he came up
with a simple and consistently
implemented concept. Halfway
across, the roof of a box finished
in bright red polyurethane
transforms into a voluptuous
curve that serves as a stand. e
Mark 60 Cross Section
counter-form provides the ceiling
of a clubhouse that is realized in
nothing but wood. Maas proudly
points out the most beautil
detail: at its lowest point the
ceiling very nearly touches the
floor, and he has managed to avoid
placing a column at that point.
It’s just a pi that a stairway is
needed to the outside in order to
reach the boom steps, which
obscures the view of the band of
glass that has been meticulously
kept open.
e fact that the
architectural handiwork doesn’t
work out equally well across
the board comes to light when
we step up onto the stand. e
proportion between the rise of
the step and the depth of the
tread varies, and the stairway is
also much steeper than the gently
raked cross section su ests. So
this reporter fell flat on his face
– right in front of everyone. Does
this structure actually comply
with building regulations? ‘In the
planning application we never
called the roof a stand,’ says Maas.
Time for a new aphorism: all good
architecture hurts.
mvrdv.nl
 MVRDV Amsterdam — Netherlands 031

Plan Roof
032 Mark 60
Connecting Market
Text Ana Martins
ARX links Photos FG+SG
two streets Aer the former Abrantes
Municipal Market was closed by
with a five- Portuguese food-safe authorities,
storey market Lisbon architecture studio ARX
stepped in to design a new market
building. building. Faced with a narrow
plot on a slope between two
streets that lie on either side of
a cramped row of dwellings, the
architects devised a solution that
not only integrates the market
into its surroundings, but also
blends building and ci. e
1,280-m2, five-storey building has
a whitewashed concrete shell that
represents contemporanei in the
midst of old houses. José Mateus,
who cofounded ARX in 1991
with his brother, Nuno Mateus,
discusses the project.
How did you deal with the
difficult site?
JOSÉ MATEUS (ARX): e
market building is not only
Cross Section
on a pronounced slope; it is also
set between two streets. We
realized that we could connect
them by adding a staircase at the
northern edge of the plot. is
way, the market works as an
alternative street; it becomes an
integral part of the ci and has
a lively air of spontanei.
From certain perspectives, as you
move through the market, you
notice that curved and straight
lines seem to come together to
form abstract ‘paintings’. Is this an
intentional – and aesthetic – part
of the design?
Like most architects, we have
a sequence of images in mind,
almost like cinematic travels, as
we develop our designs. In the
case of the central market space,
we imagined the experience of
shoppers roaming from stand to
stand. e idea of movement led
to the fluid design of the
mezzanines and spiral staircase.
Why did you break up the main
volume into different parts?
We were inspired by a sculpture
created by Pedro Cabrita Reis,
who used lengths of aluminium
profiles in a work based on
cu ing and displacement. e
effect is very power l, thanks to
the tension that occurs between
the upper and lower pieces of his
sculpture. We wanted to explore
the phenomenon, and we did so
by breaking the building into
parcels. It is not something new.
Sanaa came up with a similar
solution in the design for the
New Museum in New York, but in
Abrantes it opened the way for us
to build a bridge between the scale
of the building and that of the
surrounding streets.
arx.pt
 ARX Abrantes — Portugal 033

Opposite A false sense of symmetry between

the narrow stairs and the chimney of the
house to one side of the market building plays
with the idea of equilibrium and balance –
a theme found in much of ARX’s work.

Long Section

+4

+3

Natural light coming through a south-

facing clerestory bathes all floors.

+2

0
034
Chemistry
Atelier Tekuto’s latest house is an
experiment involving volcanic ash.
Text Cathelijne Nuijsink
Photos Jérémie Souteyrat
Innovative technologies,
new structural systems and
‘forgoen’ regional materials
are the keys to Atelier Tekuto’s
design approach. How does this
agenda work together with the
clients’ requirements in a private
residence like this?
YASUHIRO YAMASHITA (Atelier
Tekuto): e clients, both chemists,
had quite specific requirements
from the beginning. ey wanted
a house that is a daring piece of
architecture and environmentally
friendly at the same time. ey
also desired an exposed concrete
finish, both on the interior and
exterior. Given these requests
we conducted a series of studies
on how concrete was used in
the twentieth century and how
it should be used going forward
into the twen-first century, and
came across Shirasu. Shirasu
concrete uses the volcanic
by-product of pyroclastic flow
deposits as a substitute for the
fine aregates in concrete such
as sand. It is a natural resource
found abundantly in Kagoshima
Prefecture in the south of Japan.
Its porous structure is anticipated
to give concrete humidi control
and deodorizing effects. Given
these qualities we were convinced
that this material would meet the
clients’ expectations.
Mark 60 Cross Section
0 +2
−1 +1
It took over two years of
research before the Ministry
of Construction granted special
permission to use this new
concrete. Why all the effort?
Japan is lacking in the fine
aregate used for the
manufacture of concrete. River
sand is either exhausted or
banned for the protection of the
environment, while alternatives
such as rocks and concrete
from demolition sites require
tremendous energy and therefore
generate an increased level of
CO2 emissions. To use Shirasu
is to utilize as yet disregarded
resources, with the added
advantage of bringing economic
benefits to the region. Presently
it costs roughly ¥500 (€3.8) per
tonne to dispose this material
but as a replacement for sand,
the value could be as much as
¥3,000 (€23) per tonne. To that
end, we have established an
association, RMUN (Regional
Material Utilization Network)
with the intent of freely sharing
this technology with architects
and construction companies
who wish to use this pe of
concrete, helping to develop
and vitalize towns and regions
in Japan and in any volcanic
country, for that maer. Cuing one of the volume’s corners has created
tekuto.com a sense of spaciousness in the four-storey house.
 Atelier Tekuto Too — Japan 035

Photo Atelier Tekuto

036 Mark 60 Cross Section
In Denial
Text Arthur Wortmann
Photos Huon+Crow
In December, the International
Criminal Court (ICC), established
in 2002, moved into its first
Schmidt Hammer Lassen permanent accommodation,
designed a fortress for the situated in e Hague and
designed by Danish firm Schmidt
ICC, but is loath to call it that. Hammer Lassen. Six volumes
occupy a joint base. Five of
these accommodate offices for
the nearly 1,000 employees;
Site the sixth is the Court Tower,
the highest and most centrally
located volume, which contains
stacked courtrooms. In the ICC,
individuals are prosecuted that
are suspected of genocide, crimes
against humani and war crimes.
e complex looks
abstract and demure. Its
appearance is dominated on
all sides by modular façades
with rectangular windows.
Nothing betrays its nction. Is
e landscape design was done by SLA, who teamed it an office building, a research
up with Schmidt Hammer Lassen for the competition. institute, a prison perhaps?
During the press tour, client and
architect didn’t miss a single
opportuni to emphasize the
supposedly ‘welcoming’, ‘open’
and ‘transparent’ character of
the complex. is was a curious
choice, for those are precisely the
concepts that do not apply here.
Approaching the building, you
see five lines of defence. e first
is a dune landscape that raises
a barrier between the building
and the public road. Walking
up the dune, the omnipresent
surveillance cameras immediately
have their eye on you. en follow
a metres-high concrete wall,
a moat and the actual façade
of the building.
For the press tour, we
entered via the main entrance –
a separate structure that is part
of the surrounding wall. We
passed securi gates and our
bags were scanned. We were
 Schmidt Hammer Lassen
given to understand that most
of the building’s spaces were not
accessible for reasons of securi
and that in many places, taking
pictures was prohibited or subject
to strict guidelines.
We encountered the
most extreme example of this
at the top of the Court Tower,
the most prestigious floor, we
were told, from which the view
over the dune landscape and the
North Sea is truly magnificent.
Taking pictures of this view was
out of the question, however,
because snipers in the pay of
the accused might well analyse
the photographs to determine
from where they were taken and
subsequently open fire on the
windows. You see, witnesses
involved in ongoing processes
stay on this floor. Or do they?
Moments later, it turns out
that the space is only used by
e Hague — Netherlands 037
the ICC staff that chaperone
the witnesses. e witnesses
themselves are housed in
viewless rooms deep inside
the building (which do
have slights).
So, what is this building,
if it isn’t welcoming, open and
transparent? It’s a nctional
machine, with lots of glass and
steel, grey stone, endless numbers
of carpet tiles and brown-beige
walls – everything that has
a soothing effect on people
processing traumatic events
according to volume I of some
psychology handbook. And it’s
probably a logistic masterpiece,
with its separate routing for
judges, suspects, witnesses,
victims and spectators. But we
don’t know that for sure, because
the floor plans must remain
A new custom-made façade system was developed for
secret, of course. the project, made of a composite material known in the
shl.dk aviation and wind turbine industry.
038 Mark 60 Cross Section

Heinrich Degelo ‘fractured’ the façades of

the building to make it appear smaller, beer
integrating it into the surroundings.
 Degelo Architects
Brilliant Cuts
Degelo’s universi library is
a diamond-like arrangement
of facets.
Freiburg — Germany
Text Katharina Marchal
Photos Barbara Buehler
‘e old Universi Library
Freiburg looked like a meteorite,’
says architect Heinrich Degelo
about the predecessor of the new
building. e structure from 1978
wasn’t just voluminous, taking up
a lot of urban space, it also showed
architectural and energetic
deficiencies. Because of the costs,
complete demolition wasn’t an
option for the ci at first. For
its competition entry Degelo
Architects therefore only cut away
parts of the building. And so the
idea of a diamond was born. at
concept endured, even aer the
owner decided it would be cheaper
to break down most of the original
building; in the now realized
library only the basement and
three stairwells from the original
construction remain.
Like a glass mountain, the
new universi library rises from
the earth. Recesses and protruding
façades mark the main entrances;
opposite the neoclassical theatre
the receding façade enlarges the
theatre square. e crack in the
039
façade reflects the middle ressault
of the universi building on the
other side.
Inside, the library consists
of two parts. e quiet area is
reserved for users with a library
pass and individual students.
In the public area things are
livelier, louder and more social.
ere’s a café with access to the
terrace on the ground floor. Two
atria provide space for the stairs,
which lend access to the private
zone; these voids are visible in
the façade.
All façades are horizontally
articulated over the ll height
of the building. Movement
arises through the alternation
of open and closed façade parts
and their constantly changing
positions, in accordance with the
principle of a zipper. Because of
the tilted façade elements, the
surrounding area is mirrored
differently every time, in both
the reflective glass and the steel
façade components.
degelo.net
040
Office in
the Tropics
SUB envisioned its studio as a
laboratory for tropical architecture.
Text Danny Wicaksono
Photos Paskalis Khrisno Ayodyantoro
e careers of architectural
duo SUB, Muhammad Sagitha
and Wiyoga Nurdiansyah, are
just starting off. Although they
have already completed several
interesting designs and just
won the Indonesian Institute
of Architects Jakarta Chapter’s
Award, they still think that the
best is yet to come. ‘We are still
searching for ways to sharpen
the formula for our architectural
designs,’ Wiyoga explains. A
formula that according to the
architects is best represented in
their modest studio, which they
completed recently.
Mark 60
Driven by the thought that they
need some stabili in their young
careers, they invested all their
savings in a 70-m2 building that
will serve as a laboratory. Here,
they can explore the possibilities
of architecture in the tropics.
Located in a suburb of Jakarta,
an area called Bintaro, the three-
storey building has all the different
spaces they need to be able to
grow the studio.
e ground floor contains
a service space, meeting room and
flights of stairs that can be used for
small gatherings, thus extending
the floor area. e first-floor office
Cross Section
space has room for up to 12 people
– anticipating ture growth – and
the roof-top pebble garden offers
the possibili to enjoy the friendly
tropical climate a er a long day
of work.
ere is a relaxing
atmosphere to the building. e
casual brick façade, exposed
concrete and low-cost materials can
be seen all around the building. Big
windows allow unobstructed views
of the surroundings. Sunlight, heat,
wind, rain and humidi; they can
all be experienced in this office. And
that’s a rare quali in a work space.
subvisionary.com
 SUB Jakarta — Indonesia 041

SUB’s studio features a casual brick façade, exposed

concrete and low-cost materials. Big windows allow

+1 Long Section unobstructed views of the surroundings.

0 Roof
042 Mark 60 Cross Section

Sign Language 1 2 3 4

Text and graphics eo Deutinger,

Stefanos Filippas and Liam Cooke

e rise of the icons has gone hand his representation of athletes for 15%

in hand with industrialization, the summer Olympics in 1972.

increasing mass mobili and
growing mass communication.
e highest concentration of sign
language is found in public spaces
such as roads, airports and the
World Wide Web – areas where a
high diversi of nationalities, but
also a high diversi of levels of
education are to be expected. e
result of this is that 4-year-olds
now know the meaning of a zebra
crossing, the sign for a toilet or
the YouTube icon even before they
learn to read and write.
New sets of cyphers are
added to this language in waves.
One of the earliest was the
introduction of international road
signs, standardized by the Parisian
International Road Congress in
1908. To deal with the foreseeable
increase of mass events and mass
tourism Otl Aicher, Germany’s
most influential graphic designer,
created another set of icons with
e next wave of sign language
was introduced by industries 12
such as rniture manufacturers,
who turned to graphics more and
more oen in their assembly and
instruction manuals, which they
distribute worldwide. Today, emoji
are emerging at a rapid speed,
providing people with a quick way
to express their feelings to a large
set of intercultural friends.
With the upcoming
introduction of augmented reali,
even more signs are sure to appear.
17
Every square millimetre of the
digital screen, glass or display
is uerly valuable, a fact that
20
whiles every application, notation
or message down to a cypher.
What we already have today is
a beautil sea of icons. A sign
language comparable to Egyptian
hieroglyphs, yet understood
everywhere and therefore the
world’s first truly global language. 25 26

27
Across Down
1. Life 2. Playground 31. Disabled
11. Avalanche 3. Mall shopping 32. Zebra crossing 29
12. Shopping 4. Inaccessible 33. Night swimming
16. At the beach 5. E-mailing 34. Withdrawing money
17. Fast food 6. Optimism 35. Failed surgery
18. Triathlon 7. Syrian regees 37. Awakening 30
19. Hipster 8. Dangerous waters
20. Moving out 9. Biathlon
24. Train crash 10. Broken glass
26. Train ride 13. Working day 32 33
27. Car rental 14. Rainy day
28. Chernobyl 15. Car accident
30. Tourist 16. Hunting
36. Bank robbery 21. Train to the airport
36
38. Injury 22. Camping trip
39. Date night 23. Guys’ night out
40. Slippery pier 25. irs
41. Jo ing 29. Wildfire

39

40
Sources: aiga.org / iso.org / segd.org / brandsoheworld.com / flaticon.com
Some of the icons are designed by Freepik.
 Infographic 043

5 6 7 8 9 10

11

13

14 15

16

18 19

21 22 23

24

28

31

34 35

37 38

41
044 Mark 60 Cross Section

Plaza and foyer form

one continuous space.
 MX_SI Granada — Spain
Avoid the Void
MX_SI sheds light on
Federico García Lorca.
Long Section
Text Rafael Gómez-Moriana
Photos Pedro Pegenaute
In recent decades, architecture
commemorating violent death has
pically relied on a dark, austere
and markedly emp space to
symbolize absence: the cathartic
‘void space’. For the Federico
García Lorca Cultural Centre in
Granada, however, architecture
studio MX_SI, faced with a site
bordered almost entirely by the
backs of historical buildings, opted
for a complex that is daylight-
filled, open and inviting. A
statement by the young Barcelona-
based architects from Mexico and
Slovenia explains their treatment
of the 10 linear meters of exterior
exposure they had to work with:
‘We introduced light through the
roof and made a continuous space
by blending the centre’s foyer with
the plaza in front.’
Federico García Lorca
was a Granadino poet, dramatist
and musician who died in the
summer of 1936, shortly aer
the outbreak of the Spanish
Civil War, at the age of 38. He
045
was killed by Francoist fascists.
e exact location of Lorca’s
remains is a mystery to this
day, despite a empts to unearth
them (including one by drunken
British punk rocker Joe Strummer
in 1984). e cultural centre
honouring Lorca’s legacy houses
a range of nctions: auditorium,
gallery, library, archive and an
almost seamless plaza-foyer that
features a bar-café. Seen from
Plaza Romanilla, adjacent to the
Granada Cathedral, the building
is nearly invisible, apart from its
enormous nnel-shaped portico.
e nnel effect is the result of
a series of deep concrete
structural slabs with varying
angular folds that filter and
diffuse the zenithal light.
Lorca, who was
executed for his openly liberal
views and homosexual identi,
would undoubtedly prefer to
be remembered in just such
a positive light.
mx-si.net
046 Mark 60 Cross Section

Self-
Made Surf
Escape
WMR Arquitectos
builds a holiday
home for friends.

Text and photos Sergio Pirrone

‘is young couple – good friends

of ours – waited patiently while
longing for their dream to be
realized,’ says Felipe Wedeles of
WMR Arquitectos. ‘A few years
ago they bought a 6,400-m2 plot
of land on a panoramic site, with
the intention of building a low-
cost but well-constructed escape
from the ci.’ ey asked Wedeles
and his partners, Jorge Manieu
and Macarena Rabat, to design
something simple, nctional
and spacious.
e house had to be
comfortable and open to the
surrounding scenery. It also had
to protect the occupants from
a dominant sea wind. Situated
on a small rise at the foothills of
the coastal mountain range that
overlooks Matanzas Bay – once
an unknown fishing village,
Matanzas is now an a raction
for surfers and windsurfers – the
holiday home enjoys a magnificent
view of the Pacific.
e house overlooks the
ocean to the west, and its slanted
roof, which faces north, allows
sunlight to enter the interior
throughout the day, bathing
the living area in warmth and
light. e house consists of a
living room with open kitchen,
two bedrooms, a bathroom
and a semidetached storeroom
for surfing and windsurfing
equipment. Adjacent to the house
are an extra shower, terraces, a
fireplace and a hot tub.
e construction process
deserves our a ention, but not
because it was so uncomplicated
or because the house is clad in
local pine. Humble and low-cost,
Casa Perez-Muller is mainly the
work of the owners themselves.
e architects offered basic
engineering information, but
their clients supervised the site at
all times. Two local construction
workers formed the remaining key
pieces of the puzzle. Friendship
and a few lamb barbecues made
the difference.
wmrarq.cl
 WMR Arquitectos Matanzas — Chile 047

Casa Perez-Muller is a collaborative project

that involved the owners, the architects and
two local construction workers, all of whom
built the holiday house together.
048
Re(m)cycle
Shi reuses early Koolhaas
ideas in museum design.
Text Jos Bosman
Photos René de Wit
e Museum Square in Kerkrade,
which first only featured
technology museum Continium,
now has two new additions, the
Columbus Earth eatre and
design museum Cube. One of the
two opening exhibitions in Cube,
‘Design Identities’, was compiled
by the Red Dot Institute. e fact
that architecture firm Shi was
given the commission to design
the extension of the Museumplein,
shortly aer it won the
Mark 60
Red Dot design award 2012,
was unsurprising.
Seeing the result, it’s
hard not to think back to the
early work of OMA. e design
includes various OMA motifs – and
surprisingly freshly and beautilly
executed at that. e orange portal
near the entrance brings the
Kunsthal in Roerdam to mind.
It’s amazing how OMA’s famous
idea of the ‘captive globe’ can be
experienced here in the Columbus
Earth eatre: a hemisphere with
a 3D projection space that visitors
can look at from above. But it’s
Cross Section
especially the articulation of the
villa that Rem Koolhaas once
designed together with Linda
Spear that can help to beer
understand the spatial scenario.
e villa was an abstract
montage of entirely different
spatial experiences.
In Kerkrade, too, a number
of isolated elements have clearly
been connected. A path leads to
and from the station along a glass
façade; on it a large, apparently
floating, black beam volume (with
strikingly few supports) that
partly nctions as a canopy. e
brick gravel of the patio, its tennis-
court colour continuing in the floor
and patio walls of the museum,
shows through the glass façade.
e floor of the canteen is mint
green. Here, characteristic elements
from the promising range of
ideas of the young OMA – mostly
on paper at the time – shine in
actually realized architecture.
at sense of refinement also
applies to the façade of the cube
and the randomly rotated stairs.
e result is a more than successl
museum complex.
shi-au.com
 Shi Kerkrade — Netherlands 049

01 Continium Discovery Center

0 02
03
Columbus Earth eatre
Cube Design Museum
04 C-Square Communi Area

01

04

02

03

Long Section
Two staircases lead to the sunken entrance area. One
is orientated towards the train station and the other
towards the town’s centre.

A large part of the museum

extension is located
underground. e existing
sunken patio has been
extended underneath the
new buildings and connects
old and new.
050
French Balcony
Brenac & Gonzalez
sculpts with balconies.
Text Emily Downing
Photos Sergio Grazia
e docks of Saint-Ouen, just
north of Paris, are undergoing
a rapid urban transformation.
As part of this development
Parisian firm Brenac & Gonzalez
was appointed to design a series
of residential towers on a site
located adjacent to the Seine
River, with views over the
recently completed Grand Parc de
Saint-Ouen. e firm perceived
the 12-storey blocks as individual
sculptural forms, each with its
own identiing characteristics,
composed in a rational
arrangement to articulate an
expressive architectural language
across the vast site.
Mark 60
Apartment block D3b-Lot 02 is
situated at the centre of this new
urban advancement. Enveloped
in a striking metallic skin, the
building’s façades playlly reflect
and distort natural light. Inspired
by Japanese origami techniques,
orthogonal balconies puncture
the building’s planes, ju ing
through the metallic coating
that folds and wraps to give the
appearance of structural support.
Brenac & Gonzalez associate
Emmanuel Person comments: ‘e
inside of each of these balcony
pods is coated in white paint that
contrasts with the metallic look
of the rest of the façades, as if to
Cross Section
Typical Floor
assert the idea of disconnecting
them from the original skin of
the building.’ e folding planes
also provide extra privacy for
the residents by distorting views
across neighbouring balconies
without reducing the quali of
light in the interiors.
e apartment blocks
are joined at their bases by
a double-height plinth, ing
the whole site together and
providing a secure access point
to the entrance halls and the
landscaped inner cour ard
situated at the centre of
the project.
brenac-gonzalez.fr
Brenac & Gonzalez Saint-Ouen — France 051
052
Text Florian Heilmeyer
Photos Herling / Gwose / Werner
It all began with chocolate. In 1969
chocolate manufacturer Bernhard
Sprengel donated his 20th-century
art collection – financed with
money earned selling chocolate
– to his hometown, on condition
that the ci would build a new
museum, which eventually opened
in 1979. Since 1984 it carries the
name of the generous benefactor,
and the Sprengel Museum
Hannover now ranks high
among German museums known
for modern art. e original
architecture is modest: the large,
Mark 60
Sprengel and the
Chocolate Factory
Meili Peter’s museum extension reflects
the building’s sweet origins.
elongated, low-rise volume
stands on the embankment
of a main street, nearly hidden
from sight behind trees. Not
an iconic structure, it is a silent
building. A 1993 extension did
li le to change the building’s
architectural aesthetics.
A steadily growing
collection, however, required a
second extension. Swiss architects
Marcel Meili and Markus Peter
won the competition for its design
in 2010 with a plan that proposed
the addition of a big black box to
Cross Section
the museum, a concept quite unlike
that of the earlier buildings. Inside,
a staircase rises in a dynamic swirl
to access the ‘dancing rooms’ and,
at the same time, to connect the
black box to the existing building.
‘Dancing rooms’ is the architects’
name for ten new galleries of
various sizes and heights; these
spaces are slightly askew in
relation to one another, as well
as to the building’s otherwise
strict grid.
Clad in anthracite-coloured
concrete with different finishes,
the rather brutalist extension
appears raw and rough. ick
banding reminiscent of relief
work gives the façade rhythm
and depth and an a ractive play
of light and shadow on a bright
day. e layered exterior can also
be seen as a migh machine
ready to roll, perhaps signiing
the movement of visitors inside
the building. Or do those
dark concrete ‘bars’ symbolize
chocolate, the substance that
made Sprengel’s dream come true?
meilipeter.ch
 Meili Peter Architekten Hannover — Germany 053

e new extension features a cluster of ten

new galleries, which are slightly askew in
relation to one another, as well as to the
building’s strict grid. Because these spaces
have different dimensions and heights, they
seem to pierce the roof.

+1
054
Shelters by
the Sea
Lumo’s 50 holiday shelters
channel visitor traffic in
a coastal protection zone.
Text Gili Merin
Photos Lumo Arkitekter
Not all Danish architects design
ski-sloped power stations that
puff smoke rings. A humble site-
specific intervention by Aarhus-
based Lumo is making a major
environmental and contextual
impact on its surroundings.
Integrated into the wild landscape
of the South Funen Archipelago
– a group of 55 low-lying islands
in the Baltic Sea – are Lumo’s
holiday shelters. e architects
realized a total of 50 units on 19
carelly selected sites spread over
the coastal zones of four island
municipalities: Langeland, Ærø,
Svendborg and Faaborg-Midt n.
Blue Landmarks – the name
given to Lumo’s quaint wooden
structures – are asymmetric follies
defined by strong angular lines and
irregular contours. Reminiscent of
traditional fishermen’s huts, they
are clad in black-stained shingles
and punctured by portholes, as
well as by rectangular openings
that offer panoramic views of
the majestic island scenery. With
interiors that range from 5 to 25
m2 and heights from one to three
storeys, the cabins offer guests a
Mark 60 Cross Section
generous choice of options. ree
units serve as overnight shelters
for two to seven people and
include saunas or picnic areas;
one is an elevated bird-watching
platform; and one nctions solely
as a lavatory. According to the
specific climatic and geographical
aspects of their se ings, they
appear individually or collectively,
as solitary volumes or as part of
a cluster.
Working in collaboration
with the Danish Nature Agency,
a branch of the country’s Ministry
of Environment, Lumo integrated
the Blue Landmarks into a
strategic coastal protection zone
that not only channels visitor
traffic but also bolsters a year-
round recreational infrastructure
that counteracts the need for
makeshi campsites, which
o en harm the seaside. Kayakers,
boaters and divers a racted by
the convenience of the shelters
seem set to ensure the project’s
success as a welcome addition
to the natural framework of
the Baltic coast.
lumo.dk
Lumo Arkitekter South Funen Archipelago — Denmark 055
 056
Mark 60

Per-
spective
 Perspective 057

‘It’s beer
to take
an im erfect
decision
than Jan Benthem on designing
stations, page 098

to decide
nothin
at all’
058 Mark 60 Perspective

Station Amsterd m

to
Station
New train stations in
Roerdam, Arnhem
and Breda turn the
NS’s traditional values
upside down.

Text e Ha ue
Wies Sanders

Roerdam

Breda
 Various Architects Netherlands 059

Utrecht

Arnhem
060
De
Inktpot – the Inkwell – is the
nickname of the brick edifice
called Main Building III in the
ci of Utrecht, the nerve centre
of Dutch railway company NS.
It was designed in 1918 by NS’s
in-house architect George van
Heukelom, who translated the
characteristics of the railway
company into architecture:
reliable, hierarchical, closed,
autonomous and gloomy. You
need only look at recent NS
stations to realize that a century
later, those values have been
turned upside down.
Until about 1995, the NS
had an in-house architecture
department as well as an in-house
principal, with offices in Main
Building III. e architects were
not only on the NS’s payroll,
they were also bound by a strict
corporate ideology that included
both the yellow-blue house sle
with matching graphic images
and measurements, logistic
processing, technical standards
and architectural sle. ese
were largely determined by the
board and by the principal. Since
the 1980s, the design of the area
around the station was also
cast as much as possible in the
mould of the ideal station square:
the focus was on pedestrians,
who from one central location
could opt for a bicycle or a taxi,
a short walk to the bus stops or
a – somewhat longer – walk to
adjacent offices, car parks and
finally the ci itself.
Around 1990, three things
happened that had a large impact
on this – hitherto unshakeable
– railway bastion. e first was
a change in ambition: from
management to spectacular
growth. e ambitious plan Rail
21 was developed to double the
rail network and the number
Mark 60
of passengers, to turn the six
stations involved – Amsterdam,
Ro erdam, e Hague, Utrecht,
Breda and Arnhem – into urban
hubs, and to build two high-
speed train lines that would
connect the Netherlands to
France (alys) and Germany
(ICE). is infrastructural plan
was in line with national spatial
planning as described in the
Fourth Memorandum on Spatial
Planning Extra and is to this day
the basis for the major station
projects, of which Ro erdam and
Arnhem have now been officially
completed. e conversion of
the remaining four stations is
still ongoing.
e second change
since the millennium was
the renewed success of large
cities as a ractive living and
working environments, which
subsequently led to an increase in
numbers of passengers, cyclists
and shared mobili users.
Around the majori of the larger
stations, this created chaotic and
unappealing traffic areas filled
with buses, bicycles and other
transit services.
e third change
made itself felt in large parts
of Europe: privatization and
commercialization of previously
public services such as public
transport. is eventually made
it possible for architects who had
never designed a station before
to tender for the commissions to
build new stations – for years the
domain of in-house architects. In
addition, the commercialization
required an increased programme
for retail and offices; privatization
subsequently led to complex
and unclear responsibilities, and
the aforementioned success l
urban development and growth
ambitions of the railway company
Perspective
hugely increased the complexi
of the station projects. ough
the plans thus had to survive
20 difficult process years (or
more), the result is a series of
experiments that were never
before possible, as evidenced by
the new stations in Ro erdam,
Arnhem and Breda in particular.
Both the ci and the
residents of Ro erdam are
proud that the station project
was realized on time and within
budget. Ro erdam Centraal has
the most classic and relatively
uncomplicated setup of the three
stations discussed here. It was
split into four separate projects
and divided over different
architects, whereas the other
two stations were designed
indelibly in a single gesture. e
sub-renovations in Ro erdam
comprised the underground
connection of the Randstad Rail to
the subway; a car park with water
storage and the re rbishment
of the open-air tram and bus
stations. An entirely new
phenomenon, a free underground
bicycle garage, was also added to
the renovated station.
e architects in
Arnhem and Breda opted to
add complexi to the building
task by combining all of the
programmatic elements in an
unusual way to create a visual
spectacle. In both stations, offices
and infrastructure are used
to create height and décor; in
Breda the station roof is a large
parking deck and in Arnhem
the station roof is the floor of a
convention centre and a road.
In Arnhem, the bus station,
trolley bus station and parking
nctions are a logical and
appealing part of the transport
hub, while these elements are
situated at some distance and in
relatively unappealing locations
in Ro erdam. As a result, the
creation of a spatial décor in
Ro erdam was only possible
by covering the station hall
with an oversized roof. Like any
other building, the Ro erdam
station conforms to the regime
of the Ro erdam ci centre
development: a collection of
separate elements, logically
arranged within the established
grid of the public space. Quite
a boring design principle, but
it works and has the flexibili
necessary, considering that
almost every building around this
station has been replaced in the
past 30 years.
Ro erdam Centraal
doesn’t represent a break with
previous decades of station
building: it neatly follows the
principles of NS and ci that say
pedestrians and daylight are to
be given free rein. For Ro erdam
that’s an excellent choice because
it liberated the ci from the
decades-long hegemony of trams,
taxis and tristesse. e stations
in Arnhem and Breda, with their
radical integration of nctions
on the other hand, do represent
a break with previous decades
of Dutch railway architecture.
Rather than to Dutch examples,
they refer to foreign stations such
as EuraLille or Kyoto or, rther
back in time, the labyrinthine
Brussels Centraal.
e station in Arnhem
was designed by UNStudio. e
ingenious construction of the
fanning, spiralling column (the
‘helix’, in the terms of architect
Ben van Berkel) creates a large,
open station hall in which all
pedestrian traffic is led to and
from the different transport pes
via smooth slopes. e station
hall is the spectacular result of
 Various Architects
these solidified conductors. It’s a
design principle that’s both weak
and strong. Strong because from
this location, pedestrians can still
logically oversee all the transit
traffic and because the space feels
like a festive and scintillating
welcome. Weak, because there
are always going to be changes
in pedestrian flows over the
years. And will these solidified
conductors be flexible enough
to adjust when that happens?
‘In the stations in Arnhem
and Breda, offices and
infrastructure are used to
e route to the car park, for
instance, is very prominent now,
but it’s likely that the relationship
between train and car will weaken.
And the ci bus station, which
passengers hardly use, is situated
in the most beautil location in
front of the station, thus pushing
the two main pedestrian routes to
the ci centre aside. Nevertheless,
the station completed here is a
great place to spend time in for
now and photographers will
absolutely love it.
OV Terminal Breda, a
design by Koen van Velsen, is
almost the exact opposite of that
of Arnhem. Rather than flows,
the spaces that had to be created
formed the starting point for
the Breda design. Van Velsen
chose a setup reminiscent of the
glory days of British brutalism,
more specifically of the recently
demolished former Greyfriars bus
station in Northampton. Just like
Greyfriars, Breda station has been
set up like a brick monolith in
which offices, a bus station, flyovers
and shops are designed in a single
coherent gesture. Like a brick shell,
all nctions have been grouped
around the tracks and the bus lanes:
create height and décor’
in the front, in the back, beneath the
tracks and on top of the platform
roof. In an incoming train, you
therefore experience a closed indoor
world that feels like a gloomy old
tram depot, but with the imposing
height of a nineteenth-century
steam train station.
e bus station was
built at the raised level where
the trains come in; the car
park is located high above the
tracks. is leads to rather a lot
of infrastructural bombast in
the form of lengthy ramps for
buses and cars – it looks prey,
but was it really necessary? Not
because of a lack of space in the
immediate environment of the
station – many, many hectares
Netherlands
will be lying undeveloped there
for years to come. Here, the
traffic flows that elegantly and
logically lead to architecture in
Arnhem are used to construct
a desired architectural look at
the cost of accessibili, clari
and environmental embedding.
e raised bus station adjacent
to the elevated track results in a
substantial increase in the size of
the half-sunken pedestrian tunnel
that, unlike its counterpart in
Roerdam, isn’t clear and bright
but forms a labyrinthine series of
shopping arcades, bicycle tunnel
and pedestrian connections. e
way out – particularly in the
temporary situation that will last
until the summer of 2016 – isn’t
easy to find. e building is like
an ingenuous Japanese puzzle box
and has you looking for a secret
buon to get you out. It’s a public
transport terminal that seems to
cry out that the station is in fact
the ci: Why would anyone still
want to visit the ci centre?
is vision is confirmed
once you’re out in the open air.
While in Arnhem and Roerdam,
transit transport is found in
logical places, in Breda you can
061
see the cars driving and the
taxis waiting through ingenious
viewing holes consisting of
carelly placed windows,
exploded-view façades, light
catchers and voids, but how to
physically reach them is harder to
figure out. ough the station is
largely finished already, the front
won’t be completed until next
summer. Hopelly, it will be a
lile easier to realize a connection
to the ci from there.
e grand gesture to wrap Breda
station in an all-encompassing
layer of offices, dwellings, ramps
and shops was undoubtedly the
boldest choice made with regard
to any Dutch station. Not only
because of the architectural
and logistical choices, but also
because of the unmanageable
connection to the rest of the
ci and the ture plans in the
railway zone. Time will tell
whether it will become the next
Greyfriars bus station – aptly
nicknamed ‘the mouth of hell’ –
or indeed the promised new piece
of ci that the people of Breda
will be as proud of as the people
of Roerdam and Arnhem are of
their new stations today. _
062 Mark 60 Perspective

Photo Siebe Swart

Team CS Roerdam — Netherlands 063

Space
and
Skin

Benthem Crouwel,
Meyer & Van Schooten
Architecten and West 8
have given Roerdam
an iconic ci gate.

Text
Piet Vollaard

Photos
Jannes Linders
064
If
the quali of architecture is
judged by the enthusiasm with
which urbanites, users and the
media embrace a new building,
Roerdam’s new Central Station
is top architecture. But there
was lile of this enthusiasm
noticeable when the decision was
made to demolish the old station,
designed by architect Sybold van
Ravesteyn. A popular station, it
symbolized – together with the
adjacent Groothandelsgebouw
and Lijnbaan – the reconstruction
of Roerdam aer the 1940
bombing that wiped away a large
part of the ci centre. Spelling
out the words ‘Centraal Station’,
the neon sign on the roof was a
characteristic part of the building.
As a final farewell to the station
before its reconstruction began
in 2007, industrial designer Peter
Hopman rearranged some of
the leers into the melancholy
anagram ‘Traan laten’ (in tears)
– a text that adorned the façade
during the last few months before
the demolition.
Apart from such
sentiments, the need to renew
the station was undisputed.
e building, especially the
passenger tunnel, was too small
to accommodate the increased
visitor flows that were expected
to increase even rther aer the
introduction of the high-speed
train. Its structural condition
was poor, especially that of
the platform roofs. And a new
subway line to the north was to
be created that was to link up
with the underground station just
in front of the façade.
In 2001, Alsop
Architects developed an initial,
comprehensive master plan to
transform the station, including
a large part of the ci centre
around it, into a commercial
Central District. ough this
plan was in many ways the
perfect answer to the question,
Roerdam’s political and
economic climate changed to
such an extent that the idea of
Mark 60 Perspective
a comprehensive master plan
was cancelled and a tender was
issued in 2003 for just a new
station building. It was won by a
combination of three Dutch firms
– Benthem Crouwel, Meyer & Van
Schooten Architecten and West
8 – under the name Team CS.
In response to the
assignment to design a ‘sober
and efficient’ station, Team CS
disentangled the logistics of pes
of passengers and public transport
to bring them together in a simple
main shape: a continuous roof
over the intersection of the tracks
and the passenger tunnel between
both entrances. e roof continues
on the side of the ci centre and
is folded into a station hall with
a triangular section, with one of
the corners stretching out over
the Stationsplein to point in the
direction of ci boulevard Weena.
e idea that a station
could also be a social space is
not denied by this station, but
it is subordinated to the rapid
processing of passenger flows.
Most of the shops have been
placed on either side of the wide
passenger tunnel, while the
station hall has been kept as free
of ‘developments’ as possible.
In that respect, the station hall
nctions as a covered urban
square and as a part of the
continuous urban space.
While the old station
kept the central part of the ci
separated from the residential
area in the north, the route
through the station now forms an
elongated north-south link that
connects the two districts. is
continuous pedestrian domain,
which runs from Westersingel on
the ci-centre side to Spoorsingel
in the north, has been almost
entirely kept free of crossing
Every day, Roerdam Central Station processes
traffic. rough car traffic on some 110,000 passengers. Expectations are that
Weena is processed underground number will have increased to 323,000 in 2025.
and connected to an underground e roof tip points them towards the ci centre.
parking garage. e connecting
public traffic flows of bus, tram
and taxi are located on either side
of the station hall.
 Team CS Roerdam — Netherlands
‘e people of Roerdam don’t know
the meaning of the term agoraphobia’
065
ough logistic and spatial/urban
planning continui determine the
overall plan of the new station to
a large extent, it can nevertheless
be said to exhibit an architectural
dichotomy that refers to the
great stations of the nineteenth
century. ese classic stations
combine a representative station
building with a utilitarian, glass
platform roof. Monumentali
and expression versus neutrali
and engineering skills. is divide
is in keeping with the different
urban atmospheres on either side
of the Roerdam station: a quiet
residential area with a nineteenth
century canal to the north and the
modern ci centre with high-rise
buildings to the south.
e roof over the
platforms, made entirely of glass,
folds down to create an elongated,
neutral glass façade in the north.
e space under the platform roof
is open and light. e support
structure comprises a system
of wooden, secondary girders
on steel main girders above the
platforms. e main girders are
supported by Y-shaped columns
that, at right angles to the main
direction, once again split into
two sides over the platform
staircases. To a certain degree,
the Y-shape of the columns refers
to the buerfly-shaped platform
roofs of the old station. However,
it’s also structurally sound,
since it shortens the span of the
main girders. e platform floor
between the staircases is largely
made of glass to provide the
passenger tunnel with daylight.
e neutral colours and
materials and the constructive
clari of the platform roof
contrast sharply with the
expressiveness of the roof over
the station hall. e huge steel
structure of the folded roof,
necessary to keep the subway
tube below free of columns, is
covered on the outside with a
skin of wrinkled stainless steel
and with wood panelling on
the inside. e roof-façade →
066 Mark 60 Perspective
Team CS Roerdam — Netherlands 067

e ceiling in the main hall

features 23,000 m2 of Western
Red Cedar wood panels.
068
section in the east nctions as
a huge main girder that rests
on a concrete base below the
projecting tip. e glass façade
of the hall runs parallel to the
tracks. e projecting roof section
is above the outside entrance
of the subway. us, the station
square is covered by a triangular
roof that leaves the façade of
reconstruction monument
Groothandelsgebouw visible,
yet reaches to the Weena. e
continui of indoor and outdoor
space is rther emphasized by
the identical stone paving used
both in the station hall and on the
station square.
e two parts of the station
differ the most with respect to
the nature and quali of incident
daylight. Le Corbusier’s well-
known moo L’architecture est le
jeu savant, correct et magnifique des
volumes en lumière (architecture
is the masterly, correct and
magnificent interplay of masses
brought together in light) is
oen quoted with regard to the
role of light in architecture. But
that role is in fact a subservient
one, Le Corbusier was primarily
concerned with the play of
volumes that is ‘brought to light’
and only secondarily with the
quali of the light itself. Perhaps
Mark 60
‘e station hall nctions
as a covered urban square’
the more or less uniform nature of
the light in Mediterranean areas
played a part in that. In a North-
West European maritime climate
like that of the Netherlands, on
the other hand, the nature and
intensi of the daylight vary.
Inside Central Station,
contrastingly, there certainly
isn’t any play of volumes going
on, volume is in a sense absent:
everything is space and skin.
e light plays a dominant role
here and it is the varied nature
of the light itself that determines
the experience of the different
spatial atmospheres. Calling it
a symphony in light is perhaps
taking things a bit too far, yet
I, a frequent user of the station,
think it’s a real treat to be able to
directly experience the various
qualities of the light, dependent
on the time of day, weather
conditions and seasons. On a
beautil day, passengers alight
into the summer sun, gently
soened by the cloud of solar
cells in the glass roof over the
platforms. Via the passenger
tunnel, in which ample daylight
falls through glass platform
floors, they reach the relatively
dark station hall through which
fellow passengers move like
contours, backlit by the large
Perspective
front window that looks out onto
the ci. At night, this light-
dark ratio between the hall and
the platforms is the other way
around. en, suddenly, the hall
is a warm and urban, artificially
lit interior space whereas the
glass façade is a dark surface with
illuminated buildings.
e roof of the station hall
includes relatively small slights
fied with mirrors that were
supposed to help create beams of
sunlight, like in Grand Central
Station in New York. ough
the hall is dark enough for it,
I’ve never seen any sunbeams
there: it seems what’s missing
is the sufficiently dus or moist
atmosphere needed to create them.
Nevertheless, the station is still
very much un jeu savant, correct
et magnifique du lumiere en espace,
to paraphrase Le Corbusier.
Upon completion,
the residents of Roerdam
immediately and enthusiastically
began to use the new station.
e large open space in front
of the station was embraced as
pical of Roerdam as well. Rem
Koolhaas once called Roerdam
‘a wind tunnel experiment that
people seem to take part in
quite enthusiastically’. Indeed:
the people of Roerdam don’t
Le e roof covering the platforms
is made entirely of glass and folds
down in the north to create a long,
neutral, glass façade.
Opposite e Y-shaped columns
that support the main girders of
the platform roof are split into two
sides at the boom to make room
for the staircases and escalators.
know the meaning of the term
‘agoraphobia’. A proposal to
place a sculpture by artist Olar
Eliasson on the station square
was immediately criticized by the
locals because it would infringe
on the open space.
Still, the sentiments
surrounding the old station
haven’t remained completely
unanswered. One of the works
of art that flanked the old station
has been relocated to the first
platform, above the bicycle tunnel
in the western part of the station.
In addition, the paern of that
work is used in the decoration of
the interior façade of the station
hall and in the paern of the solar
cells on the roof. e old, analogue
clock that once adorned the façade
was also put back up, as was the
huge neon leering which, on the
façade, spells the name ‘Centraal
Station’. e old name, that is:
for as far as people in Roerdam
are concerned, there is only one
central station. e official name,
‘Roerdam Centraal’, including
the logo of Dutch railway
company NS, is only found on
the northern façade. _
mvsa-architects.com
benthemcrouwel.com
west8.nl
Team CS Roerdam — Netherlands 069
070 Mark 60 Perspective
Team CS Roerdam — Netherlands 071

e platform roof is
structurally clear,
with neutral colours
and materials. Light
that falls through
the glass roof is
somewhat soened
by solar cells.
072 Mark 60 Perspective

Cross Section

0
12

09

10

13
05

01

10 06

10

02
03

03

03
04
11

03

03

03

03
08

07
 Team CS Ro erdam — Netherlands 073

Long Section

+1

01 Station hall
02 Tickets
03 Shops
04 Passenger tunnel
05 Trams
06 Buses
07 Taxis
08 Bicycle parking (1,600 spaces)
09 Entrance to bicycle cellar (5,200 spaces)
10 Entrance to subway
11 Bicycle tunnel
12 Weena
13 Groothandelsgebouw
14 Platforms
15 Waiting area

15

14

14
074 Mark 60 Perspective

Photo Siebe Swart

UNStudio Arnhem — Netherlands 075

e
Twister
UNStudio’s station in
Arnhem is all about
the spectacular ‘twist’
that ties together the
pedestrian flows.

Text
JaapJan Ber

Photos
Huon+Crow
076
e
recent opening of train and bus
station Arnhem was a milestone
occasion. For the ci of Arnhem,
which finally gets to use a long-
awaited new station building. For
rail manager ProRail and Dutch
railway company NS in their
pursuit of the modernization of
rail transport. For train and bus
passengers, who had to make do
with a building site for years. And,
last but not least, for UNStudio,
the office that worked on the
project for nearly two decades.
For UNStudio, the project
is connected to the early days
of the practice. Just two weeks
before the firm first began to
work on this assignment, the
Erasmus Bridge was opened
in Roerdam. Ben van Berkel:
‘Oddly enough, the project in
Arnhem marks the beginning of
our career in a way. Our firm is
now 25 years old, and for 19 of
those years the station has been
an ongoing assignment.’
e project has gone
through many stages since 1996,
obstacles have been overcome and
adjustments made. A long period,
which might make one think that
a somewhat outdated building
has arisen in the provincial ci
Mark 60 Perspective
in Gelderland. But one look at the
end result and every thought of
outdatedness vanishes. In Arnhem,
UNStudio has built a progressive
transfer machine that intelligently
allows urban densification and
streamlines the various user flows
and transport modes.
Indeed, the long time span
was a substantial factor behind
this success. Since 1996, the design
has gained quali, refinement
and precision, making the station
in Arnhem a more complete,
improved building. It would have
been impossible to realize the great
ambitions in a shorter period. In
other words, the concept for the
station needed time to mature and
was fortunately given that time.
Additionally, the lengthy
process helped achieve a
refinement of concept and form as
well as materialization. e double
tender and the stru le with high
construction costs also turned out
to be blessings in disguise. When
the tender of the transfer hall was
delayed due to its complex shape,
the construction process was
divided in two, allowing earlier
calls for tenders and fewer delays
for the parts of the station that
were easier to build. →
e office square on top of the station
hall roof is accessible from the ci by
wide stairs and a ramp.
UNStudio Arnhem — Netherlands 077

Every day, Arnhem Centraal processes

some 50,000 passengers. Expectations
are that in 2025 that number will have
increased to 110,000.
078 Mark 60 Perspective

e ‘twist’ in the centre of the station hall

opens up the space, constitutes a meeting
point and helps people find their way.
UNStudio Arnhem — Netherlands 079
080 Mark 60 Perspective
UNStudio
‘It’s a story about the
ways people move around
as comfortably and
Top ough initially designed
in concrete, the flowing ‘twist’
was eventually made of steel.
Le Being able to see where
you need to go at a glance is
UNStudio’s promise to every
traveller and visitor.
Arnhem — Netherlands
naturally as possible’
It wasn’t until aer the decision
was made to not build a
monolithic concrete structure,
but to use a lighter combination
of glass and concrete for part of
the transfer hall that a contractor
for that part could be found.
Choosing steel first and foremost
increased manufacturabili,
but also affected the end result
in other ways. In the transfer
hall, the tactile and aesthetic
characteristics of steel certainly
look their best.
is course of events
caused UNStudio to work from the
outside in, rather than the other
way around. ‘Rather than with the
heart, we started with the elements
around it,’ says Van Berkel.
When UNStudio became
involved in the commission nearly
20 years ago, the initial challenge
was to study and chart visitor
flows in the entire ture station
area. Van Berkel: ‘at study led to
the idea to not simply create a new
station, but to think in terms of a
transfer location.’
Aer the division of
the construction process, the
firm worked on two parallel
commissions. One involved the
design for the north side of the
station area, consisting of among
other things the platform roofs
with a traverse that allows direct
081
access to the platforms from
the north, a bicycle bridge and
retaining walls to overcome the
differences in height between the
railway yard and the surrounding
hills. Concurrent with this mainly
infrastructural assignment, which
was completed in 2011, UNStudio
also continued to work on the
master plan with transfer hall,
platform tunnel, shopping spaces
and two office towers.
To Van Berkel, who prior
to the commission in Arnhem
hadn’t worked on a public
transport node before, it wasn’t
just a complex technical task but
also a challenge to once more have
a design embrace the excitement
of travel. Van Berkel: ‘Using a new
and vital impulse, we wanted to
countera ack the recent design
history of this pe of place, which
was oen characterized by a
rather meagre nctionali.’
e station in Arnhem
differs from the railway stations
that are being completed more or
less simultaneously elsewhere in
the Netherlands. For rather than a
space in which the movement of
passengers and other users take
place, the UNStudio design is that
movement itself. e connection
between form and nction is thus
more direct than is the case in
many other stations. →
082
From the beginning of the design
process UNStudio therefore cared
less about the autonomous form
than about the organization of the
building. Slistic or architectural
references were of no importance
at all. e architects looked for
an architectural language and
form that stems almost entirely
from the logistic rather than the
aesthetic domain.
Van Berkel: ‘It’s a story
about wayfinding and the
ways people move around as
comfortably and naturally as
possible.’ is involves overseeing
the situation, transparency,
movement and orientation, with
as lile signage as possible.
e result of all of
these design efforts is a station
in which forms, flows and
structures come together like
a whirlwind. e building
is a continuous landscape of
movements. Gently sloping
floors provide access to the bus
stations, underground car parks
and platform tunnel from the
transfer hall, without any sudden
differences in level. e architects
developed the complicated
geometry necessary to realize
this in collaboration with Arup.
e V-walls used are
one example: walls placed at an
angle across multiple levels so
that different spaces are literally
created that are rthermore
Mark 60
free of columns. e walls
are particularly visible in the
underground car park.
Another example is the
use of the geometry of the Klein
bole, a mathematical figure
without any clear inside or
outside. Properties of this figure
are visible in the transfer hall: a
turned support structure graces
the middle, the twist. At the
boom, it twists downwards to
the deeper-lying trolley bus stops
and underground bicycle parking
facili. Upwards, it creates a lazy
staircase that together with two
escalators provides access to a
rooop street from which the
office towers can be reached. e
twist, made of a combination of
concrete and steel, nctions as a
kind of knot; a both structural and
visual object that in its solidified
dynamic can be considered as a
symbol for the entire plan.
Central to the design is the
smooth accompaniment of traffic
flows to different levels, enhanced
by the use of rounded corners
and oval or round windows. e
natural differences in height
at the location are a significant
factor, but the task to achieve
a densification of the urban
programme was more important.
Now that the building is
completed, it will be interesting
to monitor the effect of the
station, especially at the level
Perspective
of the ci. Arnhem is situated
on the slope of a lateral
moraine along the Nederrijn
River and the station is located
amid the Arcadian greenery
of Park Sonsbeek and the
still underdeveloped but very
promising river banks. e
completion of the station is a
catalyst for rther development
of the inner ci. But whether that
impulse will have real impact
depends on timing, money and
political willpower. What is
certain is that UNStudio’s new
transfer hall and a compact
urban programme have provided
the centre of Arnhem with a
‘sublimated piece of ci’ that
appears strong and distinctive
enough to continue to transform
its urban surroundings. _
unstudio.com
Le e tunnel to the platforms
and the platform roofs were part
of the first phase of the project,
which was completed in 2011.
Right e differences in height
in the surrounding landscape
are incorporated into the design
and led to a station hall in which
things happen at many levels. At
the very boom is the entrance
to the car park.
UNStudio Arnhem — Netherlands 083
084 Mark 60 Perspective

06

05
01

02 01 Station hall
02 Local busses
03 Underground parking garage
04 Bicycle parking facili
05 Tunnel to train platforms
06 Regional busses
07 Platforms
08 Elevated office square
09 Office tower
10 Offices
11 Office tower (ture development)

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04

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02
 UNStudio Arnhem — Netherlands 085

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Long section

‘e recent design history of train

stations was oen characterized
by a rather meagre nctionali’
086 Mark 60 Perspective

Photo NINE e Netherlands

 Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 087

A Single
Grand
Gesture

Although the station is already largely

completed and in use, the southern section
will not be finished until the autumn of 2016.
Photo NINE e Netherlands

In Breda, Koen van Velsen

realizes a station that wants
to be part of the ci.

Text Photos
JaapJan Ber René de Wit
088 Mark 60
Koen
van Velsen has become an
expert in the field of railway
architecture, and not just because
he built the station in Breda. He
started designing the building
in 2005, but between 2009 and
2015, he also held the position of
National Railway Architect – his
task was to develop and manage
the so-called ‘railway plan’ of
Dutch railway company NS. is
includes all design related to
user experience of the railway,
including that of stations. His
work in Breda thus coincided for
a large part with his position as
National Railway Architect. So it’s
not surprising that the station, the
first he ever designed, has great
significance to his views on the
railway plan.
Van Velsen’s main focus is
on the role stations play in the ci.
e latest generation of stations
in Dutch cities are no longer
mono nctional buildings in
which trains and buses arrive and
depart. ey accommodate many
other nctions besides public
transport. e goal is to create a
location with a densi that is as
high as possible, conceived in the
spirit of the compact ci, in which
all transport flows converge.
is ambition is recognizable in
Van Velsen’s design for Breda. It
Perspective
is obviously a station, a public
transport hub, but it’s also a
building that wants to contribute
to the rther development of the
ci. And though the building will
not be finished until the autumn
of 2016, many of the intentions are
already visible, with two thirds of
it completed and in use.
Like the recently realized
stations in Ro erdam and
Arnhem, the station in Breda is
one of six national key projects
that are currently being built
in the Netherlands. In the late
1990s, these projects were set
up thanks to extra budget made
available by the then Ministry
of Housing, Spatial Planning
and the Environment to ensure
good, urban integration of public
transport hubs. Now that they
are lly or nearly completed, it
is clear that the former ministry
has succeeded in its mission to
care lly connect the stations
with the existing inner cities,
something that was hardly a
priori for previous generations
of major stations.
Since the 1990s, views
about what a station can or must
be have changed dramatically.
e station in Breda is a good
example. In addition to a train and
bus station, the building houses
a ended and una ended bicycle
parking facilities on either side of
the tracks, 147 apartments divided
over four volumes, shops, offices,
cafés and restaurants, a rooop
car park and public outdoor
spaces. e spatial focus is on two
intersecting axes: the high-speed
line between Amsterdam and
Brussels/Paris and the connection
between the inner ci and the
Belcrum neighbourhood on the
other side of the tracks. e la er
axis has taken the form of a new,
public pedestrian and bicycle
tunnel, centrally situated in the
new building and up to 36 m wide.
Van Velsen wanted the
building to be for and of the
ci, a ractive to travellers, and
to radiate comfort. He wanted
to unite all of the nctions in a
single grand gesture that extends
over the tracks. To highlight
the inevitable and self-evident
character of that gesture, he chose
brick as a cladding material. In
his opinion, only brick could
unambiguously connect the
existing part of the ci with the
ones that had yet to be developed.
To prevent massiveness, Van
Velsen has incorporated pa erns
that refer to all previous stages
of the design into the brickwork
besides windows and other →
Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 089

e paerns in the brickwork

dematerialize the façade.
090 Mark 60 Perspective
Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 091

Between the bus and train station,

ramps lead to the car park on top of
the station building.
092
openings. ey dematerialize the
façade and provide lightness;
the fascinating play of surfaces
is on occasion reminiscent of
architectural pictograms. e atria
of the offices and the courards of
the apartments allow daylight to
penetrate deep into the building.
Both the train and the
bus station are housed in a
single, large station hall, so no
additional platform roofs are
needed. Besides the monumental
character, the height and the
scale of the central space are
particularly eye-catching. is
sensation is rther enhanced
by the entrance to the rooop
car park that ascends across this
hall at an angle: two slanting
ramps form striking elements in
the otherwise orthogonal space.
e car park, which also forms
the roof over the tracks, is the
first ever built in such a location
in the Netherlands. To Van
Velsen, that choice is more than
a gimmick: it’s a confirmation of
his view that the building forms
a hub of nctions. Drivers are
not ‘condemned’ to an invisible,
underground car park, but drive
Mark 60
through the station hall to park
above the tracks.
Similarly, and as
emphatically as intractably, the
architect has also made out a case
for a number of other parts of the
design. e intervention in the
course of the road that runs past
the station to the north is a good
example. From the beginning, Van
Velsen proposed (successlly)
to create a slight curve in this
initially straight road near the
station. To passers-by, the result
is an almost scenographic and
gradual unveiling of the building.
e slightly undulating façade
accompanies the traffic in a
natural way and looks hollow
at certain points, for instance
around the entrances and at the
courards around the apartments.
e architect was also involved in
the design of the public space on
this side of the station.
Similarly, but on a
completely different level, Van
Velsen has asserted his ideas
with respect to the station hall
interior, the pedestrian and
bicycle tunnel and the shopping
area. Here, the architect opted for
Perspective
a luxuriant look by using stone
floors and walls in combination
with wood and mirroring
ceilings. ese materials not only
ensure the comfort of the indoor
spaces, they also contribute to
the scenographic intentions
of the architect. Visitors are
presented with surprising
views, unexpected passages and
reflections of other users. is
experience is rther enhanced by
the unusual way daylight enters
through windows and atriums.
Van Velsen treats the station as a
theatre and its users as actors.
During a recent seminar
of the Royal Institute of Dutch
Architects Miguel Loos, advisor for
the offices of the National Railway
Architect, called the station in
Breda an example of a ‘forward
leaping station’: a station that has
been demolished and replaced in
its entire once or several times.
is approach allows the recurrent
building of a station that is equal
to the task at hand. e alternative
is a so-called ‘developing station’,
which requires the rther
development of existing, sometimes
monumental buildings. Amsterdam
Centraal and Den Haag Centraal,
which have been extended by
Benthem Crouwel, both belong
to the second category.
Van Velsen has managed
to avoid one temptation of the
‘forward leaping station’-pe. And
that is: to design a modern, but
relatively generic building that,
like a UFO, could have landed
anywhere, a building that owes
its character mainly to its own
moderni. Van Velsen’s design
for Breda represents exactly the
opposite: ll of character indeed,
designed on the basis of a strong
idea, but also closely interwoven
with the surrounding buildings.
Modest as well, because the aim
is to integrate the station into the
new development yet to be built
in the north. It’s a fairly solitary
building today, but according
to the architect, it will merge
with the ci over time. Aer
that, what’s le is a serviceable,
balanced and appealing building
as well as an intractable and
unique station of a quali that
until recently was not self-evident
in this pe of building. _
koenvanvelsen.com
 Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 093

Le Crowning the station building is

a car park for 750 cars.

Right e pedestrian tunnel is finished

with floors and walls of stone. Every day,
30,000 passengers use the station. It is
expected that by 2025, that number will
have increased to 57,000.

Below Slights, openings and atriums

provide both surprising perspectives
and a varied incidence of light.

‘Van Velsen treats the station as

a theatre and its users as actors’
094 Mark 60 Perspective
Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 095

In addition to a train and bus station,

the building also houses shops, offices
and 147 apartments.
096 Mark 60 Perspective

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01

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06
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04 02

01

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06

04

04
02

04 01 01

03
06
04 01

01 Entrance
05 02 Public square
03 Station hall
04 Shops, cafés and restaurants
05 Pedestrian tunnel
06 Bicycle parking
07 Patio
08 Housing
03 09 Offices
10 Train platform
06 11 Bus platform
12 Ramp to the car park
13 Car park

Cross Section
 Koen van Velsen Breda — Netherlands 097

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Long Section
098 Mark 60 Perspective

Jan Benthem.
Photo Anneke Hymmen
Benthem Crouwel Architects Amsterdam — Netherlands 099

‘It’s
beer to
take an
imperfect
decision
than to
decide
nothing
at all’
Benthem Crouwel worked on four of the
six major new stations in the Netherlands.

Text
Piet Vollaard
100
Benthem
Crouwel Architects is one
of the larger design firms in
the Netherlands. Since it was
established in 1979, the office has
been designing in a technical/
nctionalist tradition. Among
its many assignments, large and
small, cultural and infrastructural
buildings predominate. Among the
former pe, the most renowned is
the extension to Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam that was completed
a few years ago. e series of
infrastructural projects started
with several customs buildings
in the 1980s and a succession of
alterations to Schiphol Airport,
which continue to this day.
Benthem Crouwel has also
worked on four of the six major
stations that were transformed
and adapted in the 2000s to
serve increased passenger traffic.
We spoke with co-founder Jan
Benthem about working on such
complex commissions.
Let’s start by asking which
stations have inspired you. In
which tradition would you want
to classi those stations?
JAN BENTHEM: e classic 19th-
century stations are imprinted in
my memory – stations where you
feel you’re arriving somewhere
as you ride into them. For me
personally – I was born in
Amsterdam – the large canopy of
the Central Station in Amsterdam
was such a spot. at same sense
of arrival is present in all our
stations: a single large space. Our
stations are not so much buildings,
but more like covered ci plazas.
Mark 60 Perspective
You’ve worked on a series of
stations. How did that succession
of commissions come about?
As a bureau we’ve long been
involved with various extensions
to Schiphol Airport and we also
designed the railway station there.
In Amsterdam we worked on
the seven stations for the metro’s
North/South Line, including
the one at Central Station. e
discussions about the placement
of that metro station soon turned
to the connections with other
modes of public transport. One of
the points of discussion was the
placement of the bus station. We
then proposed situating the bus
station directly behind the station
on the IJ waterfront, aligned with
the railway platforms, rather than
next to the station, which was
the original plan. A succession of
sub-assignments eventually led to
a master plan commission for the
whole station.
A few years later we were
asked to share our thoughts about
the adaptations to the central
stations in e Hague and in
Utrecht. In both instances we
were called in a er extended
discussions and consideration, undertake yet another station of building that would still be
which had resulted in earlier such size and importance, as we representative, if we were allowed
plans being rejected. In fact that were working on all the major to reassign the separate budgets
situation repeated itself once stations in the Randstad. We of the two commissioning parties,
more in Roerdam: there, too, decided to submit a tender with ci and railway, which were
the process had ground to a halt a team of three firms, which we designated for the station hall and
a er the abandonment of the gave its own name right from the platform area respectively.
Central District master plan by the start: Team CS. e brief So we also had a fairly detailed
Alsop Architects. When the call called for a ‘sober and efficient’ budget ready to accompany the
for tenders in Roerdam was station. Based on our experience proposal. We weren’t allowed to
issued it seemed inconceivable to with earlier stations, we said we submit it at that point, but we
us that we would be allowed to could create a sober and efficient had it ready. ree weeks later,
 Benthem Crouwel Architects Amsterdam — Netherlands 101

In Amsterdam, Benthem Crouwel designed

the new bus station by adding a fourth
glazed canopy on the waterfront directly
behind the railway station in the tradition
of its three existing canopies.
Photo Jannes Linders

when we received a request for
a rther elaboration in the form
of a budget, we were able to
submit it the following day.
How did the cooperation
between the architects on the
team work out?
At Schiphol, where we’ve already
done lots of work, it’s impossible
to do things on your own. So we’re
used to cooperation and enjoy it,
too. In Roerdam cooperation was
a strategy to win the contract.
Once that succeeded we were
already having so much n with
the project that it rolled onward
without a second thought. For
Roerdam it was a true collective.
We put together two young
designers without too much
previous history from each firm
and set them the task of working
as a single new bureau. We also
decided not to chop the design
into subsections, by for example
dictating that West 8 as landscape
architect couldn’t have anything
to do with the stairs. West 8’s
Adriaan Geuze actually had
plen of input with regard to the
station’s canopy and detailing, and
vice versa. anks to this way of
working it has truly turned out to
be a beer station than any of us
could have achieved separately.
For all these stations you were
dealing with many different
commissioning parties. What is
the impact of having to operate
within such an aregate of
parties, which are perhaps not
necessarily cooperating?
We not only had to deal with many
parties for each major station, but
there was also a mutual rivalry
between them. At the time, soon
a er the privatization of the →
102 Mark 60 Perspective
 Benthem Crouwel Architects
Benthem Crouwel designed
e Hague’s renovated
Central Station. Trains
and trams cross each
other’s paths at different
levels underneath the vast
22-m-high glazed roof.
Photo Jannes Linders
railways, it was emphatically
stated that each of the privatized
railway units (infrastructure,
stations and passenger transport)
was responsible for itself and
should above all no longer concern
themselves with those other
aspects. So there were parties
around the table who were used
to doing everything together, but
they had now been instructed not
to cooperate and to stand up for
their own interests exclusively.
Furthermore, the ci councils had
a sort of love/hate relationship
with the railways, because in
the past they could more or less
operate as they saw fit. Railway
lines and stations were situated
where NS – Dutch Railways –
wanted them, and they were
designed and realized by NS itself.
So now that the ci councils had
at long last something to say about
those stations, they weren’t going
to squander the opportuni.
Moreover, in Roerdam
the station had to be put to
tender in sections. e Municipal
Department of Public Works built
the underground metro station and
also wanted to build the section
of the station hall and concourse
that was financed by the Ci
of Roerdam, while the railway
was laid by a ProRail contractor.
e boundary between ci and
railways continues through the
roof as well, so one section of its
steel frame was produced by one
contractor, the other section by
another: they’re welded together
halfway. You can no longer see
it, but that boundary very much
continues across that roof.
Amsterdam — Netherlands
‘Our stations are not so
much buildings, but more
like covered ci plazas’
In relation to the complex
commissioning and realization
situation in Roerdam, I once
heard you say that this was
actually an advantage for you
as a design team. In a situation
where nobody is able to or
allowed to decide, an independent
par like the designer suddenly
has decision-making possibilities.
So did the complexi give
you informal decision-making
powers?
Generally speaking, with the
major stations there was a lack
of concerted management or
controlling oversight. During the
privatization of the railways and
in the formulation of the brief for
the major stations, they omied
to devise a clear-cut decision-
making structure for these tasks.
But in the end the parties have to
work it out together. To a large
extent that situation caused the
failure of the earlier plans. Or
actually not so much the failure,
but chiefly not geing around to
making decisions.
As designers we were able
to take advantage of that lacuna
in the decision-making hierarchy.
e more complex the situation,
the greater the input you have
as a more or less independent,
‘non-suspect’ par. By standing
above, or rather between, these
parties put us in a much beer
position to weigh up and satis
the various interests.
e original intention was that
the major stations would not
simply nction as transport
hubs, but that an integration of
urban nctions such as living
and working would be pursued.
Has that ambition faded over
the years?
at integration has to a large
extent been the cause of the
prior history of plans grinding
to a halt: Utrecht’s Ci Centre
Plan, Amsterdam Waterfront,
Roerdam Central District,
Hoog Hage in e Hague – all
these plans were characterized
by an intermeshing of various
nctions and as a consequence
by an intertwining of the
decision-making. e position of
the various parties involved in
the process was that they each
wanted to make decisions about
their own nctional component.
With the railways, this had been
the explicit instruction since
privatization. So all these parties
assessed the plans on the basis of
nothing but their own interests,
ambitions and guiding principles.
at amounts to much more than
is feasible there, so compromises
have to be reached. But if you
are only allowed to think about
your own section, then it is
almost impossible to reach such
compromises. In the end you
are le with nobody making a
decision, so nothing happens.
If the various nctions in
a scheme are spatially stacked as
well, then things become really
tric. In Utrecht that was the
case in the extreme. ere was a
pre-existing plan to have the trams
arrive beneath the station, with
the railway station above it, a bus
station above that, the taxis above
that, and then offices on top of that
103
as well. Everything was stacked,
but this meant the decision-
making for each individual
component was dependent on
decisions for all those other
components. at proved to be
uerly impossible, a chaos.
For those stations we
searched for a structure by
which the interdependence of
the various stakeholders and the
independence of simultaneous
decisions was kept to a minimum.
In Utrecht we literally set those
different nctions alongside each
other, for which there was more
than sufficient space, instead of
stacking them. is restarted the
decision-making process. It would
be possible, if necessary, to add
office spaces above later on. And
that’s also how it went.
In addition, with our
experience at Schiphol we’ve
learnt that it’s beer to take
an imperfect decision than to
decide nothing at all, because
then nothing happens either. We
know from experience that later
on there’ll be an opportuni to
remedy that mistake. So just let
the process head in the wrong
direction for a while and keep
your wits about you, because there
will always be a moment when
you can assert control again. is
means that the end product is less
predictable, but at least there’s a
guarantee that there’ll be one. _
benthemcrouwel.com
 104
Mark 60

Long
Section
 Long Section 105

‘e histor
of desi n
contests
shows that
less than half
of the Malcolm Reading on organizing
architecture competitions, page 142

ro ects ever
et built’
106 Mark 60 Long Section

Craing a
 GilBartolomé Architects Salobreña — Spain 107

Curvaceous Cave
GilBartolomé Architects used local crasmanship to
connect a villa to both the mountains and the sea.

Text Photos
Alexandra Onderwater Jesús Granada
108 Mark 60
e dwelling has for the most part been dug
into the mountain and the roof therefore
follows the line of the mountainside.
With
the Sierra Nevada as a backdrop and the
Mediterranean Sea in ll view, the Spanish
Costa Tropical near Granada seems like
an ideal operating base for busy urbanites
that would give anything for some nature,
tranquilli and reflection. It’s therefore not
surprising that a young couple from Madrid
decided to acquire a piece of land with an
ocean view here a few years ago. Minor
detail: the plot is located on a sharp incline.
A 42 degree incline, to be precise. e closed
competition to which four architects were
invited was won by GilBartolomé Architects
with an unconventional design –
to put it mildly.
Casa del Acantilado, which literally
translated means ‘House on a Cliff’, is not just
spectacular because of its radical location.
True, building on top of a cliff has its structural
challenges, but this pe of curvaceous
landscape is quite common in large parts
of Spain and there are therefore numerous
examples of Spanish houses built against or
on top of mountainsides – the best known
are probably the Casas Colgadas or ‘suspended
dwellings’ in the ci of Cuenca east of Madrid.
However, Pablo Gil and Jaime Bartolomé
have taken the extreme environment as their
starting point and actually incorporated it into
their design. ‘We wanted to integrate the house
into the magnificent landscape that surrounds
it and do so in a cost-effective way,’ recounts
Long Section
Bartolomé. Like a cave, a large part of the villa
is located inside the mountain. To achieve this,
the architects abandoned standard construction
techniques and handled the building process
in a way unlike anything customary in Spain.
And their method may well be the most
unconventional aspect of the project.
It sounds paradoxical, but the
approach the architects decided on is
innovative especially because they chose to
use crasmanship rather than cheap, prefab
materials. ‘We consciously opted to use honest,
manual labour, using skill hands rather than
machines,’ says Gil. He explains that though
the studio works with digital designs, these
are executed by experienced hands whenever
possible. ‘Reverting to manual work rather
than implementing prefabricated systems
and industrial, semi-manufactured products
may sound expensive, but the opposite is
actually true. In fact, the overall costs would
have been higher had we taken the usual,
“industrialized” path. Obviously, the social and
psychological value is much higher as well. Our
approach allows a somewhat neglected group
of extremely skilled workers to regain some
digni and respect,’ says Bartolomé, who adds:
‘Unfortunately, industrialization is still very
prevalent in Spanish architecture.’
e most striking example of this
approach is the eye-catching roof, produced
using a handcraed formwork system made →
GilBartolomé Architects Salobreña — Spain 109

e roof is constructed from a curved,

single-span reinforced concrete slab.
110 Mark 60 Long Section
GilBartolomé Architects Salobreña — Spain 111

e undulating roof is covered with

zinc shingles and looks as if it’s been
slit open to make room for the large
windows on both floors of the house.
112
e spacious living room opens onto the
projecting terrace with pool.
of deformable metal mesh as opposed to using
the much more common formwork in wood or
steel. e roof has subsequently been covered
with zinc shingles that were also produced by
hand. is solution proved beneficial to not
only the many unemployed manual workers in
Spain and the construction budget, but also to
the appearance of the house. ‘Seen from below,
the roof is a continuation of the natural slope,
albeit with a contrasting materiali, whereas
from above the zinc shingles seem to mimic
the colour and spume of the ocean waves,’
explains Bartolomé.
e villa is almost completely dug from
the mountainside but its design nevertheless
provides all living spaces with an ocean view.
e ground floor includes a spacious living
room that opens onto a projecting terrace with
a small pool. All other spaces on the floor above
also overlook the ocean. e studio not only
designed the exterior, but also the interior and
the rnishings, ‘to flow with the rest of the
house’. Like, for instance, its roof construction,
all these elements are based on digital designs
yet completely handmade.
Mark 60
e house proves that the quali of architecture
improves when creativi, commitment and
crasmanship have free rein, says Gil. But
realizing the project was no picnic. ‘Technically,
it was rather challenging. Also, you have to
keep in mind that in Spain, architects take ll
responsibili for the safe of a building, not
engineers.’ e actual building took around
18 months: retaining walls had to be sunk
deep in the mountain, which took a lot of time,
and stabilizing the terrain alone took nearly
four months. An advantage of building into
a mountain is that in this part of the world,
direct contact with the earth guarantees a
constant interior temperature of 20° C. e
Granada cave dwellings are a well-known
example of this tradition. ‘We obviously
had to think of solutions to avoid dampness
and humidi,’ Gil continues. ‘A buffer zone
between the interior of the house and the
retaining walls allows the air to circulate.’
e studio focuses on public buildings
and experimental work in addition to
residential projects. ‘For the past three years,
we’ve very much go en into robotics, studying
Long Section
phenomena like interaction, the nction and
use of mobile devices in architecture and
dynamic systems that interact with the users,’
Gil explains. Prior to starting his own studio in
2007, Gil worked with, among others, Richard
Rogers and David Chipperfield, whereas
Bartolomé gained experience at Zaha Hadid
and Cero9 Amid Architects in Madrid. Besides
running the studio, they are both associated
with universities as well. ‘It allows us to set
up research projects and continue to innovate,’
says Bartolomé.
Gil goes on to say: ‘We’ve shown that by
using manual labour, the house can be seen as a
social statement.’ Now they’re just waiting for a
large public commission to test their approach
under different circumstances. ey already
have a challenge in mind: ‘We’ve thought
of many tricks to use to build an airport
terminal in some sort of similar manner, using
crasmanship to produce digitally designed
plans, and we think it could work.’ _
gilbartolome.com
 GilBartolomé Architects Salobreña — Spain 113

e ground floor was designed as an auditorium

and can in fact be used that way as well.

‘We consciously opted to use skill

hands rather than machines’
114 Mark 60 Long Section

From above, the zinc shingles seem to

mimic the waves of the ocean, which
all rooms of the dwelling overlook.

Long Section
 GilBartolomé Architects Salobreña — Spain 115

0
01 Kitchen
02 Dining table 03
03 Storage space 04
04 Bathroom
05 Siing area 05
06 Swimming pool
07 Terrace

02

01
05

06

07

Cross Section

‘Working at
a universi
allows us to
continue to
explore and
innovate’
116 Mark 60 Long Section

Enjoy
the
View
KWK Promes — Robert Konieczny Brenna — Poland 117

KWK Promes takes the weekend

house to an upper level.

Text
Michał Haduch and Bartosz Haduch

Photos
Olo Studio
118 Mark 60 Long Section

e risk of landslides on the steep slope caused

Robert Konieczny to treat the house as a bridge,
under which rainwater can flow naturally.

KWK
Promes is one of Poland’s most renowned
architecture offices. Although the practice
headed by Robert Konieczny designs projects
on different scales, it is probably best known
for its conceptual single-family houses, built
mainly for the high-end residential market. e
firm’s experimental buildings are sometimes
controversial responses to suburban monotony,
oen characterized by an easily recognizable
leitmotif: a reversed patio in the Aatrial House
(Mark 8, page 158), the unparalleled securi of
the Safe House (Mark 20, page 88) or, in the case
of the Auto-Family House (Mark 42, page 92), a
driveway as a ll-fledged part of the nctional
programme.
Konieczny is strongly aached to
Upper Silesia, the province in southern Poland
where he was born and an area heavily
 KWK Promes — Robert Konieczny
transformed over time by industry, primarily
mining and metalworking. Improving the built
environment in this region was one reason why
Konieczny, not yet 20 years old, made up his
mind to become an architect. At the age of 30
he founded his own office, currently located in
Katowice, the capital of Upper Silesia. It would
be another ten years before he felt ready to
apply his ideas to a personal project: a holiday
house for his family.
Brenna is a small village at the southern
tip of Poland, only 10 km from the Czech
border. An ideal place to escape from the bustle
of the big ci, Brenna is a mere one-hour drive
from the centre of Katowice. Konieczny has a
so spot for the village, perhaps because of its
Italianate name – a link to his family’s origins
– or because of good memories from numerous
Brenna — Poland
camping trips that he made to the area as a
youngster. At the heart of the picturesque
Beskid Mountains, Brenna is a perfect spot for
practising winter sports, including skiing, one
of the architect’s favourite activities.
While searching for the right site,
Konieczny came across a 1,700-m2 piece of
land: an overgrown meadow on the steep
northern slope of Równica Mountain. Its
highlight was a stunning panoramic view
of the surrounding sylvan scenery. Not one
to hesitate, Konieczny bought the plot in the
summer of 2009. In order to preserve the
virgin character of the site, he neither built
a fence along the perimeter of the proper
nor incorporated a garden into his concept. It
would take him two years to design his dream
house: an archepal form with a base made
119
of stone and a pitched shingle roof inspired by
local building tradition.
Construction – all set to begin in May
2011 – was delayed by the occurrence of several
major landslides in Poland. When Konieczny
saw the problems faced by the excavator on
the very first day of construction, he suddenly
felt that his design was not what he wanted
aer all. He didn’t like the idea of ‘fighting with
nature’. e architect asked his building team
to stop di ing and to give him a weekend to
rethink the project. ree days and nights of
exhausting work resulted in a wholly new
concept, but Konieczny needed another four
years to make his fresh vision a reali.
e recently completed one-storey villa,
based on a simple rectangular plan, is made
almost entirely out of concrete. It features →
120
Following local regulations that prescribe a
gable roof, Konieczny designed a house that
resembles a barn.
Photo Jakub Certowicz
‘Building a house for his own family is a
an impressive 21-m-wide opening composed
of seven generously glazed panels that create
a precise framework for the spectacular sights
visible from most of its rooms. e house
twists slightly ‘off the slope’, making part of
the volume (comprising bedrooms) higher –
it rests on three thin walls – thus giving the
family a greater sense of securi. e design is
more reminiscent of bridge construction than
of residential projects. Konieczny’s solution
allows water to flow freely under the building,
significantly reducing the risk of landslides.
e house has a pitched roof in compliance
with local building regulations, but is devoid
of pical eaves and equipped with a
waterproof membrane adapted to the harsh
highland climate. e chalet has a ‘second,
inverted roof’: a seemingly levitating, slanting
base that helps stabilize the construction
and, when illuminated aer dark, effectively
discourages potential intruders. Safe
measures are augmented by movable steel
walls (on the southern and eastern façades)
Mark 60
and an entrance in the form of a drawbridge
that encloses the rear part of the house when
the owners are not at home.
e 140-m2 residence has a rather
conventional layout. e night zone – three
bedrooms (for parents and two children), a WC,
a bathroom and a technical room – occupies
the overhanging section of the house, which
faces west. A large centrally positioned day
zone accommodates the kitchen and areas for
living, dining and leisure. It opens to views on
two sides of the building, filling the interior
with ample natural light. Complementing the
nctional programme are spacious terraces
with retractable glazed panels that lend access
to the house, where simple, mostly purpose-
designed rniture is juxtaposed with several
design classics. Storage space is in the base of
the building. Among Konieczny’s nonstandard
choices are thermal insulation made of
polyurethane foam (a fragment of which,
recalling a salt cavern, appears in the WC) and
a protopal fireplace.
Long Section
Building a house for his own family is a
challenge for any architect. What makes
it so difficult – and so different from other
commissions – is having to deal with a very
knowledgeable, experienced and demanding
client. Konieczny success lly passed the test
with an uncompromising scheme in which
form follows topography more than nction.
At the same time, he created a cosy retreat in
which to relax and contemplate the landscape.
His weekend house connects architecture
and nature, while not ignoring the desire for
securi. e intriguing boat-shaped structure
draws the a ention of locals and incidental
passers-by. Curiously, it also a racts animals –
horses and sheep from nearby farms, as well as
wild deer – who find shelter from the weather
under the inclined base. eir presence not
only eliminates the need for keeping the grass
mowed, but also evokes idyllic images of Noah’s
biblical ship. No wonder that the new house
has already been christened ‘Konieczny’s Ark’. _
kwkpromes.pl
 KWK Promes — Robert Konieczny Brenna — Poland 121

challenge for any architect’

In the words of the architect: ‘e wonderl view

is the most important aspect of the building site.’
Photo Jakub Certowicz
122 Mark 60 Long Section

e ‘inverted roof’ under the house stabilizes

the construction, lends an air of lightness to
the building and, when illuminated at night,
adds to the occupants’ sense of securi. e
house takes its nickname, ‘Konieczny’s Ark’,
from its shape and its araction to animals.
 KWK Promes — Robert Konieczny Brenna — Poland 123

‘In Konieczny’s
uncompromising
scheme, form
follows
topography’
e base helps to stabilize the construction,
can be illuminated and provides storage space.

Plan 08

02
01 Entrance
05 03
02 Living 05 05
03 Dining
04 Kitchen 04
05 Bedroom
06 Bathroom 06
07 Technical room 06 07
08 01
08 Terrace

Long Section

Cross Section
124 Mark 60 Long Section

Malcolm Reading.
 Malcolm Reading Consultants
e Competition
London-based Malcolm Reading Consultants
is that rare thing: a company that organizes
and runs international architecture
competitions. ‘I think there’s only one other
company in the world that specializes in
architecture competitions and it is in Germany,’
says founder Malcolm Reading. ‘ey tend to
focus on open design competitions however,
which is the way they are run in continental
Europe, whereas we tend to focus on two-stage
processes where you first select designers and
then you ask them to design.’ Malcolm Reading
has been active for almost 20 years and runs
both public and private competitions, more
recently geing involved in developer-led
work too. e 9-person team includes his wife
Catherine Reading, a former journalist and
two qualified architects (Malcolm Reading and
Director of Projects David Hamilton). Well-
known and recent competitions include the
UK pavilions at the last two World Expos,
the Guenheim museum in Finland, the
V&A extension in London and the Mumbai
Ci Museum.
What are architecture competitions
particularly good for in your view?
MALCOLM READING: What competitions
do is find talent. If you look through our
competitions, people like Amanda Levete
and omas Heatherwick made a threshold
Architecture Competitions
Malcolm Reading organizes architecture
competitions. ‘We’re looking for a building
that will be forever linked with the moment
a career was made.’
Text
Giovanna Dunmall
step through winning a competition. Most
architects have. It’s a special moment because
you are being assessed by your peers; a jury is
a great place where a conversation starts about
the potential for the building. A competition
also enables the widest possible investigation
into the problem and allows real innovation in
approach and expertise.
In mainland Europe there is growing concern
about the way architecture competitions
favour larger established practices over smaller
inexperienced ones. What do you think about
architects being excluded from competitions
due to lack of relevant experience?
No architect has done a library when he or she
does his first library! We ran a competition
in association with the Royal Institute of
British Architects for the Halley VI research
station on the South Pole and it had to follow
OJEU [EU-established public procurement]
rules. When it comes to the point of asking for
relevant experience, what do you write? Do
you have to have five sub-Antarctic buildings
under your belt? at would have limited it to
probably two practices in the world. So I said,
why don’t we just turn that around and ask
architects to demonstrate through case studies
what an extreme situation was for them and
how they responded to it. So it didn’t have to
be extremely cold, it could be something to do
125
Photo
Andrew Meredith
with the client or the construction process.
at’s how we got people like Hugh Broughton
[who won the competition; see Mark 45, page
124] and all the others who had never carried
out this sort of work on the list.
So the British Antarctic Survey [BAS] took
a risk by using someone with no South Pole
experience, but it paid off.
e client had tried every building pology
till then. Some had been snowed under, some
had disappeared off a glacier. BAS realized at
that point that they had to up their game to
get people to go and live in Antarctica for 18
months. ey wanted this building to be almost
like the space station, something that would be
identifiable and spoke about what they were
trying to do. You would have thought that the
biest risk BAS could take was to appoint
an emerging architect to do a building like
this, which is essentially like a submarine,
a life support system . . . If it goes wrong, you
are dead! But they thought that they could
balance and manage the risk. And they got
a fantastic outcome.
Tell me about the Guenheim Helsinki
competition.
e Guenheim asked us to help them design
a competition that would be genuinely open,
genuinely anonymous and that would aract →
126
Photo Riia Supperi
new and young practices. It wouldn’t be closed
to established architects, they were reaching
out to the architectural communi
of tomorrow.
You got an astounding number of responses.
We had 4 million page hits on the competition
website; we normally get around 100,000 page
hits for most of our websites. It is difficult
to predict how many people will enter any
competition but we have a registration system
and find usually about 35 to 40 per cent end
up entering. For Helsinki about 6,000 people
registered so we knew something was coming!
In the end there were 1,715 entries.
Was it a surprise to you that so many people
entered?
It was, but put the words Gu enheim and
Helsinki together and every architect wanted
to do something. at is what we are all
brought up on: Helsinki is the design capital
of the world and Gu enheim is an icon for
many architects.
How did you help the 11-man jury deal with the
mammoth task of sorting through 1,700-plus
entries?
We did some work beforehand. With the help
of two jurors, one from the US and one from
Finland, we split the 1,700 entries into two
piles. One pile was given the green or yellow
light and one pile was given a red light and
quarantined. We split up the rest into groups
randomly and created pairs in the jury, made up
Mark 60
of a Fin and an international member. We sent
each pair 150 entries electronically from the
pile we thought was worth looking at. We also
sent them the whole of the quarantined vault
so they could get a sense of what the panel
thought had made the grade and what hadn’t.
When they came to Helsinki they had already
seen a large number of entries and had looked
specifically at 150.
Did anything make it out of the quarantined
vault onto the final shortlist?
Yes, two or three projects I think. We had
rejected them for quali standards, but it is
up to the jury to interpret the brief and the
assessment criteria. at’s the skill of the jury.
e reason we created the vault was just to
help them. Instead of saying ‘here are over
1,700 entries, now start’, we helped them get
into the process intellectually. We wanted them
to start small but grow in confidence together.
What did you make of the rival competition
chaired by New York-based architect and
writer Michael Sorkin, which sought to explore
alternative proposals for the wider site, taking
factors such as housing, sustainabili and local
arts into consideration.
e competitions were seeking very different
outcomes – Sorkin’s was more about the
intellectual potential of cultural regeneration,
whereas ours was a real brief on a real site.
It obviously used the publici around the
Gu enheim competition by seeking to make
Long Section
‘e history
of design
contests
shows that
less than
half of the
projects ever
get built’
its announcements hard on the heels of ours –
but I don’t believe there was ever any consion
in the minds of competitors. As far as I can
tell, each competition aracted a different
audience. It’s for others to judge if it made
an impact. Sorkin is a brilliant commentator
on the state of cities. is would have been a
great opportuni for dialogue – I even wrote
to Sorkin su esting we correspond, but he
disregarded this.
e Gu enheim was an open design contest
but you tend to run two-stage competitions.
What is your view on both pes of
competition?
I have ambivalent views about design contests.
ey can be very powerl, but the history
of design contests shows that less than half
of the projects ever get built. And there are
lots of reasons for that. Partly it’s because
as a client you have to decide your brief at
a very early stage and don’t get the chance
to change it. Once you have finished Stage
One the architects have already made a lot
of commitments, which they can’t really
reverse out of. I also think the anonymi is a
problem, because life is about cultural fit and
relationships and so the jury is judging only the
design, they are not considering the team or the
individuals and how they work together.
I am much more in favour of a two-
stage process where you issue a call for
expressions of interest, draw up a shortlist and
then ask the chosen architects to design the
 Malcolm Reading Consultants
building. It is less of an investment and is beer
for the industry and beer for the architects.
e hit rate of two-stage processes is far beer.
How do you ensure that young and emerging
practices are considered for two-stage
competitions? And how do you keep on top of
all the talent out there?
David [Hamilton] holds a surgery on Friday
aernoons where he meets two or three
practices. Sometimes they drop in and
sometimes we ask them to come in. We also
have a research team and a directory of about
3,000 to 4,000 architects and designers around
the world. I try to do quite a lot of judging, for
the likes of WAN [World Architecture News]
and AIA [American Institute of Architects].
We keep up with emerging practices and also
with people who leave and set up a different
emerging practice. We try to keep up with what
they are interested in and what their skills are
so that we can match them with clients for
invited competitions.
What is one of the most common questions
clients ask you?
‘I want to run a competition and I want Norman
Foster and Richard Rogers on the shortlist.’
Many clients have never commissioned
architects so they only know what they have
read in the paper. When you probe a lile deeper
you find out that what they are really looking
for is a landmark of some pe. ey want to
be able to say, this is our building and this is
a great architect. at is where we can talk to
them about the talent that is coming up. In the
case of the Shanghai Expo in 2010, the event
and Heatherwick will be forever linked. If you
were on the commissioning team you have
that forever. at’s what we are looking for: a
e 1,715 entries for Guenheim Helsinki
were judged by (from le to right) Jeanne
Gang, Nancy Spector, Mikko Aho, Helena
Sateri, Juan Herreros, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto,
Anssi Lassila, Ritva Viljanen, Mark Wigley,
Erkki Leppavuori and Rainer Mahlamaki.
Photo Riia Supperi
Architecture Competitions
building that will forever be linked with the
moment a career was made.
How vital is a good jury? And what makes
a good jury?
My view about juries is that they should
be built for the project and not called off
a list. And I also believe that they shouldn’t
be ll of architects. I think a jury should
reflect something of the project so it should
have a stakeholder, a critical friend who is
completely independent of the process, and
people from the client group who are going to
be responsible for delivering the competition
project. We also like to have people on the jury
who are a lile lefield. So on the Mumbai
Ci museum competition we had the Head of
the Harvard Humanities department, a chap
called Homi Bhabha who is an anthropologist.
It was so refreshing to have someone who is
outside the profession but is very involved in
the effect of the built environment on people.
We’ll oen try to have people who come
from a different perspective but can provide
something special to the brief.
So a jury made up of only architects would
be problematic?
It’s difficult because an architect oen wants
to start designing. And when you find
an architect with the right focus and
understanding of what the competition is
trying to achieve, they want to enter the
competition themselves. e problem, with
all juries I think, is that if you have highly
respected professional practitioners their
voice can drown out the others. You have to
think about balance in a jury like you do in
a selection panel. e best ones are collegial
and are run like an intellectual debate.
127
What makes a great brief?
e best briefs are a statement of intent. Many
clients make the mistake of listing a schedule of
areas and nctional criteria but the best briefs
combine vision, context and ambition alongside
more measurable objectives. It is a starting
point in a long conversation. I oen ask clients
to imagine a day-in-the-life of the completed
building, to project themselves forward and
visualize the things that are important to them.
Is stealing ideas a problem in competitions?
I think there is sensitivi around design
contests because they are anonymous – we
certainly had it with the Guenheim. Some
people were concerned so we deliberately kept
the resolution of the online gallery low so that
you couldn’t print off big drawings. Does it
happen on competitions? I’m not so sure
really. I haven’t had anyone tell me ‘we have
seen that drawing somewhere else’. I also think
as a business strategy it’s doomed to fail.
Who wants to be known for stealing other
people’s ideas?
ere are stories of bier practices bringing
in flashy models when they are told not to and
winning competitions as a result.
We are very care l about that. It happens and
you have to think about that in advance and
be fair. When we ask for models now they
are usually drop-in models. e client builds
a model of the ci for example and you drop
your section in so that everyone starts with
the same base and you can’t come in with
a fantastic gold-plated model that lights up. _
malcolmreading.co.uk
128 Mark 60 Long Section

Penne Hangelbroek and Adriaan

Geuze conceived the master plan for
Waterliniemuseum Fort bij Vechten.
ey restored a wide strip of the
fortress to its original 1880 state.
Photo Ossip van Duivenbode
Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 129

Open the Gates

e New Hollandic Water Line is an
ingenious, eighteenth-century defence
system that has had new life breathed
into it by the Waterliniemuseum
Fort bij Vechten. Penne Hangelbroek
and Adriaan Geuze made the master
plan for this open-air museum.
Anne Holtrop designed the museum
building, with a 50-m-long model of
the military system at its core.

Text
Kirsten Hannema
130 Mark 60 Long Section

Penne Hangelbroek was responsible for the renovation

of the fortress, for the supervision, the signage and the
reconstruction of the defence walls.
Photo Jeroen Musch

It's
Between 2010 and 2012, a new entrance building, a
new access bridge and a corridor through the earth
wall designed by K2 architects were realized.
Photo Jeroen Musch
hard to explain what the New Hollandic
Water Line is. You could start with a factual
description of this 85-km-long military defence
system, conceived in the eighteenth century
by hydraulic engineer Cornelis Kraijenhoff to
protect the cities in the west of the Netherlands
against advancing foreign armies. e Line
was completed in 1880. It was a state secret,
a cray line across the landscape stretching
from Pampus, a fortress island situated near
Amsterdam, to the more southern wetlands of
the Biesbosch. e ingeniously planned system
combined sluices, dikes, bunkers, ba eries,
firing ranges and inundation fields – totalling
some 1,000 objects. In case of an a ack over
land, a permanent defence force of 12,000 men
could inundate a 4-km-wide strip of land under
30 cm of water. is would render a large
area impassable for both enemy infantry and
vessels. Fortifications and 46 fortresses were
built around a number of towns in the higher-
lying areas across the Water Line.
en you could explain that in the end,
the whole project was never made operational
and was soon superseded by the introduction
of the modern air force in the beginning of
the twentieth century. Like Sleeping Beau,
the Line fell into a 100-year sleep, until people
began to realize its cultural value. In 1995 it
was listed as a national monument; in 2005 it
was awarded the status of National Landscape
and now it’s been nominated for inclusion
on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. But even
standing in the middle of the Water Line area,
you wouldn’t notice anything special. You
wouldn’t be able to see where the fortresses
were hidden; you wouldn’t know how it’d feel
to be in a bunker, let alone what the situation
would’ve been like ‘at war’. at’s what the
newly opened Waterliniemuseum Fort bij
Vechten wants to change.
e Waterliniemuseum is the worthy
culmination of the National Project New
Hollandic Water Line, one of the ten ‘Big
Projects’ (including the renovation of the
Rijksmuseum) that then chief government
architect Jo Coenen set in motion in 2001. It
was clear to him that without a general plan,
the monument would disintegrate. Landscape
architect Eric Luiten outlined a scenario for the
project on the principle that ‘conservation by
renovation’ was necessary to adapt the former
line of defence to suit new nctions that
ranged from living and working to recreation
and culture. e centrally situated Fort bij
Vechten was designated the location for the
Waterliniemuseum: an open-air museum where
the public would get to know the defence
system and even get to experience it. To this
end, Penne Hangelbroek and Adriaan Geuze
(founder of West 8 Urban Design & Landscape
Architecture) made a master plan in 2004.
‘Our main concern was how we could
reconcile natural, cultural and economic
interests in the museum concept,’ Hangelbroek
explains. ‘We came in at a time when the Dutch
Forestry Commission, the province of Utrecht
and the bureau New Hollandic Water →
 Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 131

Photo Jeroen Musch

06

07
05

04

01

08

03
02

0
01 Parking area
02 Access bridge
03 Corridor through the earth wall
04 Museum building
05 Water Line model
06 Zip line
07 Ra connection
08 Reconstructed strip
132
Line were in the process of being driven apart
by incompatible demands. Building on site
was a point of contention. erefore our main
assumption was that there wasn’t going to be
a building, but that the fortress would explain
itself.’ To that end, the designers proposed a
number of land-art-like interventions. e
parking area, for instance, has been decorated
with concrete ‘tank-barrage elements’ (design:
Parklaan architects) and the walk across the
moat and through the earth wall surrounding
the fortress has been highlighted by a new
bridge and concrete corridor, designed by
K2 architects, the office that also built the
visitor centre – a modern interpretation
of a weapons warehouse.
‘Museum Insel Hombroich [a museum
in Germany where the natural environment,
architecture and art were designed in
conjunction] was a source of inspiration for
the master plan,’ says Hangelbroek. ‘Aer all,
with its 23 hectares of land, the fortress is
also a kind of park. We imagined creating a
hiking trail along elements that would both
raise questions about the Water Line, and
answer them.’ erefore, Hangelbroek and
Geuze’s most important intervention was to
create the so-called Strook (Strip). It comprises
a zone of 80 × 450 m in which the fortress,
which was completely overgrown, has been
returned to its original, 1880 situation. Here,
it’s plain to see how the length of the sight
lines and the differences in altitude make
the ‘defence machine’ work. e museum is
Mark 60 Long Section
Anne Holtrop took the cray lines across the landscape
as a starting point for the design of the museum building.
Photo Jeroen Musch
located just outside this strip, in the densely
wooded landscape. Hangelbroek: ‘We wanted
the encounter of nature and culture to be
as rich in contrast as possible. e contrast
creates the lessons, the wonder. is way, we
hope to arouse curiosi and that is in fact the
musicological concept.’
Since there still was a need for
extra exhibition space and therefore a
new museum building, supervisor Penne
Hangelbroek proposed to give such a building
an underground location and integrate a
model of the entire Line in it. In 2010, ten
young architects entered a competition for the
design of this building. ‘e contour map of
the terrain, with its cray lines, immediately
fired my imagination,’ says architect Anne
‘I wanted
Holtrop about his winning design. It was his
first major assignment aer a series of high-
a sculpture
profile installations and (temporary) pavilions
– although as it turned out, it wasn’t his first big
project to be built: the pavilion Holtrop designed
in one
for the Kingdom of Bahrain at the World Expo
in Milan was completed earlier in 2015.
piece, in
Holtrop designed the building as ‘a
contemporary interpretation of a fortress’.
‘I wanted to make the Water Line phenomenon
keeping
perceptible to the senses,’ he explains. From the
outside, you can only see the upper edges of the
sloping walls of two patios that have been cut
with the
out of the concrete building; an unpolished-
romantic image. e entrance is reached via
idea of a
the former barracks in front of the museum.
Of the long line of doors that once led to the → fortress’
 Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 133

e Visit
It’s Sunday morning and it’s very quiet at the Waterliniemuseum.
at’s wonderl for children, who have the ringing telephones
situated just beyond the entrance completely at their disposal.
When you pick one up, a voice explains what’s on show at the
museum. e design of the exhibition isn’t as exceptional as
the building, but the way the story of the Water Line is told
is original, with installations, photos and projections. Here
and there, small buckets dot the space, catching water. e
extraordinary building is leaking in several places.
Chairs suspended on steel cables adorn a large window that
overlooks the outdoor model. Wearing virtual reali glasses,
you can make a parachute jump here. As you ascend, the model
in front of you transforms into the ‘real’ Water Line. High above
the landscape you jump, and then a strip of land that meanders
among cities and fortresses slowly floods. With both feet back on
the ground, we expect the outdoor model to be the highlight of
our visit. Unfortunately, most of the wheels with which visitors
can flood the land are already out of order; we only manage to
operate a single sluice. Actually, one of the felt sculptures in the
exhibition forewarned us: the Water Line is an ingenious system,
Photo Luuc Jonker but it does require maintenance.
134
otherwise underground barracks, number 10
gives visitors access to the also underground
museum. You walk through a dark, low corridor
and then suddenly you’re inside, looking across
the small patio to the landscape and the s
above. You take a couple of steps and you are
in the central patio that features the pièce de
résistance: a 50-m-long concrete model of the
Water Line that visitors can inundate section
by section. Holtrop: ‘I’m not in favour of
digital representation, I believe in the power of
physical, manifest space. In this model, I wanted
to make that tangible with water, sluices and an
“actual” IJsselmeer. e model can be inundated
with 20,000 l of water time aer time.’
ough the museum looks complicated,
its plan is surprisingly simple. ‘I took the map
of the terrain and simply superimposed a
rectangle onto it,’ says Holtrop. ‘In addition, the
museum follows the altitude of the landscape,
which is plain to see when you look at the walls
around the patios. I’m always looking for extra-
architectural shapes to turn into architecture.’
From the entrance, you walk around a central
patio through the exhibition spaces either
clockwise or counter-clockwise. e varie
of spaces – stemming from the fact that the
contours of the patio as well as the altitude
are all different – ensures that the tour keeps
visitors captivated. However, Holtrop
also included some peace l moments; he
created deep window seats by the large
windows from which visitors can observe
the activities around the model.
Mark 60 Long Section
Photo Luuc Jonker
What’s fascinating about the Waterliniemuseum
is that all materials, textures, colours and details
stem from that very first drawing of a rectangle
on a map. ‘I wanted to create a sculpture in one
piece, in keeping with the idea of a fortress,’ says
Holtrop. ‘And I wanted a monochrome building.
e construction joints and formwork seams
weren’t smoothed away and remain visible, but
the concrete was sandblasted aer the casing
was removed. is way, the look of the material
depends on the weather. A bit like the natural
marks on the leather of a bag.’ A brown pigment
was added to the concrete to reinforce the
effect. e incidence of light on the undulating
façades changes the colour of the material from
yellowish to blueish to almost red.
e building was constructed by
civil engineering company Heijmans, which
has built mostly roads and fly-overs since
its establishment in 1923. ‘is is their first
building,’ Holtrop laughs. It was quite a job for
e walls of the museum building constitute both the
the company. ‘In this building, no two curves
structure and the finish, which meant that things like
are identical so everything was formed on site. cut-outs for lighting and electrici sockets had to be
Solid, without any expansion seams and cast designated at an early stage.
in one go with all the equipment, the lighting Photo Luuc Jonker
and the model – exactly as I wanted. It needed
a lot of reinforcing steel, which had to be bent
beforehand as well. Yes, it’s a design with
extreme consequences. To me, that’s exactly
what gives the building its character.’ _
jonathanpenne.nl
west8.nl
anneholtrop.nl
 Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 135

e exhibition in Anne Holtrop’s museum building

was designed by Platform Amsterdam.
Photo Luuc Jonker

06

08

06

07

04

06

0 05

01 Former barracks
02 Entrance
03 Toilets
04 Café
03
05 Shop 02
06 Exhibition space
07 Auditorium 01
08 Model
136 Mark 60 Long Section

e Way Around the New

Hollandic Water Line
In recent years, several of the fortresses that are part of
the New Hollandic Water Line have been overhauled.
What makes all of these projects interesting is the
paradox implied in the transformation challenge:
to make a building that was originally designed to
remain hidden accessible to a broad public. Apparently,
this stimulates creativi.

1
4

5
2

6
Fort Werk aan ’t Spoel
Culemborg, Netherlands
RAAAF – Atelier de Lyon –
Monk Architecten – 2011

Landscape architect and artist Ronald

Rietveld (RAAAF) designed Fort Werk aan
’t Spoel in collaboration with Atelier de
Lyon as a ‘grass sculpture’ that includes
both old buildings and new ones – such
as an amphitheatre, bunkers and bomb-
e New Hollandic Water Line proof buildings. e fortress has been
given a cultural use and can host theatre
1 Waterliniemuseum Fort bij Vechten
performances, workshops and exhibitions.
2 Fort Werk aan ’t Spoel
3 Bunker 599
e hospitali pavilion Forthuis was
4 Fort bij ’t Hemeltje designed by Monk Architecten.
5 Gedekte Gemeenschapsweg raaaf.nl
delyon.nl
6 Fort Asperen monkarchitecten.nl
 Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 137

e shape of the hospitali pavilion

designed by Monk refers to the curves of
Photo Liniebureau Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie
the surrounding bunkers and rampart.
Photo Rob ’t Hart
138 Mark 60 Long Section

e split bunker is situated on the Diefdijklinie, along

which the busy traffic of the A2 – one of the country’s
most important motorways – now oen races.
Photo Liniebureau Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie

Bunker 599
Culemborg, Netherlands
RAAAF – Atelier de Lyon – 2010

Ronald Rietveld literally cut a

seemingly indelible bunker in half
and now you can walk straight
through. Rietveld also displayed
the innards of the bunker to
change people’s perspectives of the
remaining shelters that are part
of the Line. e path between the
bunker halves opens onto a landing
pier that ends in a double row of
poles. e top of the poles indicate
the height the water reached when RAAAF has been working on the Water Line
the land was inundated. since 2006 and has realized several projects
raaaf.nl that are a cross between art and architecture.
delyon.nl Photos Allard Bovenberg
Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 139
140 Mark 60 Long Section

e designers call the new rear façade

in solid masonry ‘a modern monument

Fort bij ’t Hemeltje to the cra of fortress building’.

Photo Gerco Meijer

Houten, Netherlands
Bunker Q – 2014

e old barrack of Fort bij ’t Hemeltje is now 750 m2 of office space that’s rented out on
demand. e new design optimizes the pical characteristics of a bunker. Its thick walls
store heat, which saves energy. e old system for puri ing rain water into drinking water
is now used to collect rainwater for flushing toilets. Existing chimneys and openings have
been used as modern air conditioning and equipment conduits. Bunker Q made an opening
in the originally closed rear façade and added a window for more daylight and to be er
connect the building to the surrounding terrain.
bunkerq.nl

Cross Section 0 +1

e opening in the back

wall connects the central
entrance hall to the heart
of the fortress island, the
terreplein (from Italian
terra piana) – the flat
terrain inside a fortress or
stronghold.
Photo Liniebureau Nieuwe
Hollandse Waterlinie
Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 141
142 Mark 60 Long Section

e 900-m-long embankment is 21 m wide

and up to 7 m high. e embankment can be
negotiated by passing pedestrians and cyclists
in several locations.
Photo Liniebureau Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie
 Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 143

Plan

Bunker Q collaborated with OKRA landscape

architects to create the design and elaborations for the
reconstruction of the groundwork, the wide corridor
through the embankment and the stairway crossing.
Photo Gerco Meijer

Photo Gerco Meijer

Gedekte
Gemeenschapsweg
Tull en ’t Waal,
Netherlands
Bunker Q – 2008

e Gedekte Gemeenschapsweg is
part of the Stelling van Honswijk
and comprises a sheltered road
with a parallel earth embankment
with a length of 900 m. e
inundation canal is on the opposite
side of the embankment. A total
of 16,000 m3 of earth was added
to restore the embankment to
its original state. In addition,
Bunker Q designed several modern
passages and crossings that have
made the embankment suitable
for recreational use: a 2.5-m-wide
corridor, stairs with a vantage
point, a bridge over the canal and
a picnic table.
bunkerq.nl
144 Mark 60 Long Section

Above and le e dome consists of three

parts: a wooden construction; a steel
suspension system and 600 glass tiles the
Glasmuseum Leerdam made together with
local children.
Photos Milad Pallesh

Opposite e dome is on top of a 10-m-high

light sha, right in the middle of the round
tower fortress. Bats – who use all the Line’s
fortresses to sleep in – can still get inside
through small openings.
Photo Liniebureau Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie

Dome Fort Asperen

Acquoy, Netherlands Section
Bureau SLA – 2015

Bureau SLA decided to return Kunstfort

Asperen to the collective memory by
involving local residents in the designing.
For the slight dome they built on top
of the fortress, architect Peter van Assche
approached local primary schools. Some
600 children each made a colourl
drawing on a glass tile. e result is
a space like a kaleidoscope.
bureausla.nl
Various Architects Bunnik — Netherlands 145
146 Mark 60 Long Section

Photomontage showing the architectural concept: a concrete

element inserted into the historical structure. One of the
apartments has its rooms within the concrete element, the
other is situated outside the concrete element.
Peter Haimerl Riem — Germany 147

What used to be a small farm, close to Munich,

was renovated by Peter Haimerl on the outside
and radically remodelled on the inside.

Text Photos
Sandra Hofmeister Edward Beierle

Farmhouse

Makeover
148 Mark 60 Long Section

Apartment I

+2

10
05

09 08

+1

07

06

0
03
04

02 01

01 Entrance apartment I
02 Entrance apartment II
03 Entrance to basement
04 Guest room
05 Living room
06 Kitchen
07 Dining room
08 Bathroom
09 Master bedroom
10 Bedroom

Cross Section

e double-height dining room in apartment I

is open to the living room above it. For acoustic
reasons, some of the walls have been clad in felt.
Peter Haimerl Riem — Germany
Riem
used to be a small Bavarian village with a
church surrounded by old farmhouses. In the
1960s, the parish developed into a residential
area on the periphery of Munich. e farmers
sold their land to real estate agencies who
transformed the entire area. Today, it is part of
the ci and there is nothing le of the village
except the church and the nearby so-called
shoemaker’s farmhouse, which is now a listed
monument. e proper once provided space
for both shoemaking and a small cow farm.
ough the pical saddle-roofed farmhouse
from the 18th century was dilapidated, with
hardly more than the walls le standing, Peter
149
Apartment I is entirely contained
within the new concrete element.
Haimerl cleverly converted the building into a
twin house for two families and simultaneously
preserved evidence of its history.
‘All farmers are proud of their dunghill,’
Haimerl says in Bavarian dialect. ‘at’s why
they place it right in front of their house and
mould it into a beauti l geometric block.’ e
Munich-based architect took this tradition
seriously when he developed the concept for
his intervention in the farmhouse. He placed
a wooden structure at the entrance, exactly
where the dunghill would have been. ‘is is an
artificial, conceptual dunghill,’ he says, smiling
impishly. e geometric form has the same
shape as a properly designed dunghill, but does
not smell and provides several use l nctions.
It serves as a storage space for bicycles and
re se bins, and hides a slightly sunken outdoor
terrace that can be used for barbecues from the
curious eyes of the neighbours.
Details like this are a good example of
Haimerl’s approach. He handles rural traditions
respect lly and adjusts vernacular architecture
to current needs and living qualities to keep it
from disappearing altogether. He is an expert
in preserving historical buildings while at the
same time introducing astonishing present-day
spaces. e modification of his own house in →
150 Mark 60 Long Section

the Bavarian Forest (see Mark 20, page 166) was

a milestone for his practice, which has now
reached new heights with this farmhouse.
e historical structure that
encompassed the farmer’s dwelling, stable and
barn under one elongated roof was maintained
and made visible in all its details, wherever
possible. In addition, a horizontal concrete
element with a square section – the architect
calls it a ‘prism’ – was added in keeping with
the house’s structure. e two top surfaces
correspond with the 45 degree roof pitch; the
two bo om surfaces organize the living spaces
in different layers. As a result, the intervention
cannot be seen from the outside. e façades,
with their green blinds and small windows,
are lly original. But the interiors show an
exciting interaction between old and new, with
two connecting apartments, each about 140 m2
and with separate entrances.
‘Dividing the house down the middle
would have resulted in characterless cubes,’
says Haimerl. ‘at’s why I interlocked the two
apartments in a spatial L-form.’ e apartment
behind the south gable (Apartment II) stretches
over two floors, from the living quarters of
the farmer to the former stable underneath
the inserted concrete element. All the primary
rooms and materials that had survived time
were restored. Low ceilings and sloping walls
are evidence of the history of the house, which
is also visible in some of the timber walls and
coloured layers of paint on floor beams and
door frames. In contrast, the surfaces of the
newly added parts are pristinely white. ey
offer a neutral frame to the historical parts,
not competing with them. is is different
in the bathroom and the kitchen of this
apartment. ey are located in what used to
be the stable, and is now dominated by the
concrete element. Its inclined walls have been
le in fair-faced concrete that stresses the
difference with the old parts of the house. Like
a light channel, the invisible window of the
bathroom on the first floor lets the daylight
flow across a slanted wall, down into the solid
bathtub. e surprising and uncompromising e living room, bedrooms and bathroom of apartment I
design of the space is reminiscent of reduced are all located on the upper floor, under the pitched roof.

Japanese aesthetics and very far removed

from a traditional Bavarian farmhouse. is
atmosphere is also present in the kitchen on
the ground floor. e kitchen block is made of
local spruce and placed in front of an original
brick wall. But the slanted concrete ceiling, the
underside of the concrete element, implements
a contemporary architectural language and
gives the generous room the character of a
spatial sculpture.
In the other apartment, located in
the former barn on the north side of the
volume (Apartment I), the concrete element
is omnipresent. It organizes the living spaces
on three levels. e dining area opens up to
almost the ll height of the element. A simple
staircase with wooden steps offers access
to the different levels: it leads to the kitchen
platform and rther up to the living room
on the mezzanine under the roof. All levels
are designed as galleries that offer generous
sight lines across the apartment. ‘I wanted to
create a different flow of space than usual,’
says Haimerl, ‘a sort of swing movement that
is reminiscent of the mountains.’ He covered
both end sides of the concrete element and
the sections inside the geometric form with
simple industrial felt that absorbs noise. e
other surfaces are le in concrete. e ture
residents of the apartment will definitely have
to be light on their feet. When they reach the
living area at the top of their mountain-like
home, they can sit down at the fireplace, which
is cut into a concrete wall, on a long, built-in
bench to rest. e two bedrooms on the upper
level are a ached to this living zone and receive
daylight through small historical windows in
the south gable of the house.
e consistent use of raw materials for both the
newly added parts and the historical shell is
a key aspect of the architectural intervention.
It shows respect for indigenous traditions and
the original farmhouse. According to a local
myth, in the old days the farm workers put
a gramophone outside, under a pear tree in
front of the house. On Sundays they invited
all the servants in the neighbourhood to dance
with them. e farmhouse is a testament to
a history that’s ll of anecdotes like these.
But today there are no fruit trees anymore;
the farmhouse stands in the middle of a dense
se lement with trivial prefab houses that
almost touch it on all sides. _
peterhaimerl.com
 Peter Haimerl Riem — Germany 151

‘All farmers are proud of their dunghill’

152 Mark 60 Long Section

Apartment II

+2

+1

10

08

09

e big kitchen in apartment II is located below

0 the new concrete structure.

03
04

06

07
05
02 01

01 Entrance apartment I
02 Entrance apartment II
03 Entrance to basement
04 Guest room
05 Living room
06 Kitchen
07 Dining room
08 Bathroom
09 Master bedroom
10 Bedroom

In apartment II, several of the old rooms e collision of new and old elements lend this
were restored to their original state. former farmhouse a contemporary character.
 Peter Haimerl Riem — Germany 153

e slight in the first floor bathroom of

apartment II creates a contemplative atmosphere.
154 Mark 60 Long Section

Alex McDowell.
Photo 5D Global Studio
 Alex McDowell Los Angeles — CA — USA 155

‘Narrative
is not yet
a big enough
component in
architecture’
Production designer Alex McDowell
talks about his practice of world
building and his first steps into
architecture and urban planning in
the real world.

Text
Oliver Zeller
156
In
the 1978 essay, ‘How to Build a Universe
at Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later’,
author Philip K. Dick wrote that socie
is being ‘bombarded with pseudo-realities
manufactured by very sophisticated people’,
from politicians to novelists creating worlds
and ‘whole universes’.
Around this time, Alex McDowell
studied painting at London’s Central School
of Art and Design and became involved in
the punk rock scene, designing graphics and
record covers for musicians such as the Sex
Pistols and Iy Pop. is lead to music videos
and commercials, where he collaborated with
director David Fincher and in 1992 became
a feature film production designer on e
Lawnmower Man, the first film to explore
virtual space and reali.
A decade later, McDowell designed the
turistic world of Steven Spielberg’s Minori
Mark 60
Report, a film inspired by a Philip K. Dick short
story, which would prove highly influential.
As he clarifies, ‘there was no script leading
into the film, there was no linear narrative to
follow’; instead the world and architecture
would help define the film’s primary narrative.
It is here that McDowell cemented his practice
of world building as a design process evident
in such films as Cat in the Hat, Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, Watchmen (Mark 19, page
37), Upside Down (Mark 44, page 30) and Man
of Steel (Mark 46, page 40), building on an
oeuvre that already included e Crow, Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas and Fight Club. Even at his
most conventional he designed an airport for
Spielberg’s e Terminal, a world unto itself and
one of the largest film sets in history.
In 2015, the non-profit 5D initiative
he founded in collaboration with USC’s
School of Cinematic Arts – described as a
Long Section
Design sketch and scene from the
film Minori Report (Steven Spielberg,
Twentieth Century Fox, 2002). In 2054,
the Washington, DC area has expanded to
incorporate a vertical ci in which cars
double as elevators.
group of interdisciplinary creators who talk
about learning how to build new worlds –
was renamed the World Building Institute.
rough this endeavour and his 5D Global
Studio, Alex McDowell is taking his world
building methodologies in new directions,
including architecture and urban planning,
using narrative to help improve and evaluate
design, define systems and meet needs that the
traditional design process might overlook.
ough your background is in the graphic arts,
you have close ties to architecture?
ALEX MCDOWELL: As you say, my
relationship to media came through painting,
though my brother is an architect who has a
practice in London, McDowell+Benedei. ey
create very purist, rigorous architectural spaces
influenced by Alvar Aalto and Louis Kahn.
When I moved into film, I started to think
 Alex McDowell
about the art of space, the spatial relationships
of people in environments and became very
interested in architecture, referencing it much
more in my work than I do straight film
design. at’s progressed, to where we’re doing
increasingly more work with architects. As
many as a third of my class [Imagining Worlds:
Narrative Design Across Disciplines at USC]
are from the school of architecture. I think
that’s because we’re really pushing the idea of
narrative in space, and exploring the role of
storytelling in real world space.
You frequently work with architect Greg Lynn
and collaborated on the MoMA project, the
New Ci . When did you first meet Greg?
Greg was a consultant on Minori Report and
had a radical effect. When we took on Minori
Los Angeles — CA — USA 157
Report we had to think about designing the
architecture of the ture and we didn’t have
the tools for it. Film art departments didn’t
‘For Minori
really have any knowledge of CAD and 3D
design tools; that existed in digital effects and
post production. At the beginning I went to
Report, we
various studios, including Greg’s and Frank
Gehry’s office, and talked to architects about
built the
designing organic buildings and the tools they
used to design forms that were not readily
available through pencil. Minori Report
world first
changed completely from the beginning of
the film where we used acrylic paints and
and allowed
pencils, to the end when we were the first lly
digital art department. Greg was a huge help:
he had started using animation soware to
the narrative
design architecture and I brought some young
architects using Maya, which he was working → to evolve’
Design sketch and scene from the film
Watchmen (Zack Snyder, Warner Bros.,
2009), showing the Glass Palace on
Mars, home of blue-skinned superhero
Doctor Manhaan.
158
Designed within the context of McDowell’s
5D Global Studio, Al Baydha is a sustainable
village of 3,000 people in Saudi Arabia.
‘We use fiction as a tool to extrapolate
forward and design towards a solution’
with or teaching, into the union in order to hire
them on the film.
How did you approach the design of a ture
Washington, DC for Minori Report?
e sion of architecture and transport
was especially bold.
As production designer I would always look at
the ll picture – the historical sociopolitical
context to the story. Here was an opportuni,
however, to build the world first and allow
the narrative to evolve. ere was no script
leading into this film, so we let go of the
notion of a linear driver for narrative. Instead
it was crucial to look at it as a holistic space.
We had to consider this as urban planning – a
sociopolitical explorative that postulates how
architecture may evolve in the next 10, 15, 20
to 50 years. We looked at 2020 as a horizon
in order to fill the world with accessible and
achievable advances. e se ing of 2054 was
far enough over the horizon that big disruptive
changes like the pre-cogs [mutated humans
who ‘previsualize’ crimes] could exist. e
presence of the pre-cogs instigates a set of
rules that defines how the ci would behave.
A connection formed between a new kind
of policing with the pre-cogs and an influx
Mark 60
of population that couldn’t build in old DC
because the zoning prevents anyone building
higher than the Capitol Building. A new
vertical ci would then spring up on the
other side of the Potomac River. Its densi
would create issues of light access to lower
parts, polarizing the social strata. We asked
how does Tom Cruise, who lives high in the
vertical ci, get to work in the morning? What
if there isn’t enough space in the footprint of
the architecture to accommodate the amount
of vertical traffic required? Elevators are a
powerl component of how one negotiates
the verticali of a ci, so what if an elevator
became a hybridized self-driving vehicle. We
were looking at how the world would tri er
new solutions and that transportation system
came directly out of asking those questions.
In Man of Steel, you deviate from traditional
depictions of Krypton, Superman’s home planet.
How did that come about?
We invented a new set of rules for Krypton;
on Krypton there are no straight lines. It
evolved from redesigning the sigma S and
thinking of it in the vein of Art Nouveau. Much
like Karl Blossfeldt and his macro-photography
of the biological form launched an observation
Long Section
then, there was a similar driver on Krypton.
Krypton’s architecture evolved from a different
understanding of form, from a cellular level
where objects were grown and were partially
organic. It was a really interesting exercise
to explore how the form of objects and
architecture might have evolved and how they
would be if we made them. We kept all the
rapid protoping facilities in lower mainland
British Columbia busy for about three months,
3D printing, CNC cu ing, mould-making, and
then treating these objects with stencils.
How do you see world building ing into real
world architecture?
It strikes me that narrative is not a big enough
component yet in architecture. We’re still
living in a world where certain architects, who
should remain nameless, are more interested in
imposing their slistic stamp: the starchitect.
I don’t believe the evolution of architecture at
a ci scale is generally coming from a deep
desire to find the holistic drive of that space.
What are the social demands, the historical and
cultural context, the environmental demands
of a population that has a powerl need for
cultural persistence or change? We’ve been
working on a project in Saudi Arabia called
 Alex McDowell
Al Baydha, looking at developing sustainable
architecture and agriculture for a relatively
small village of 3,000 people. e focus is to
deeply understand the needs of a Bedouin tribe
with a thousand years of culture and how they
integrate from being nomadic to placed in a
fixed concrete and agricultural context. How
does that become feasible for them culturally
and how will they occupy these spaces. As a
film designer, our job is not to impose a sle
or aesthetic on these solutions, that’s the least
important thing. It’s purely about how we
respect the needs of the system and allow the
evolution of the design solution to respect and
facilitate the continuation of the system. at
requires just as much in how you think about
Krypton – developing the backstory as a fiction
that impacts the principal story – as looking at
the ture of oceans, retail or a nomadic tribe in
the desert.
Tell me about your world building exercise,
Rilao.
Rilao is a world building test; a hypothetical
we launched where the DNA of Rio de Janeiro
and Los Angeles magically combined on an
Los Angeles — CA — USA
island in the Pacific that’s become too small
for its population. We’ve had a year and a half
of development: eight or nine schools around
the world have built projects in Rilao and 300
people participated in a one-day world build. In
that space, 1,300 stories have been developed
now and we’ve barely scratched the surface
or modelled it, but the rulesets are in place.
Rilao has been an interesting proof of concept
in developing logic sets and discovering how
a few rules can rapidly evolve a virtual world.
Especially interesting are the collaborative
aspects of world building. Multiple people can
be involved without that being a conflict, it’s
actually a benefit. e tension that develops
between the needs of the world and the
demands of certain people is a really healthy
tension. e rules apply and they don’t actually
fall apart; usually when they’re stressed, they get
stronger. Our next step is to apply the process to
real-world cities using the principles from Rilao.
We’ll see what can develop by puing stress
on ture cities and ecology, like rising water
levels, and what special conditions might evolve
by examining different aspects. World building
allows us to reimagine any set of problems.
159
What other benefits do you see in applying
world building methodologies to urban
planning, architecture and other fields?
We’re developing methodologies that are
applicable to different situations, from the
ture of sport for Nike to Minori Report
and Rilao. We’ve learnt to develop characters
that enter the world at the same time the
environment they react to is developed. We
use that notion of fiction as a powerl tool
to extrapolate forward and design towards
a certain solution. ese exercises – be it
real-world commercial jobs, filmmaking or
exploring academic theories – gather people
around something experiential that allows
them a human lens to test the design. As
designers we can place ourselves in the
situation and become the first users. We’re
designing with respect to this very powerl
idea that story is persistent, evolves and allows
us to extrapolate forward to test spaces and
design intent now and in the ture. _
worldbuilding.institute
Rilao is a World Building Institute exercise,
combining the DNA of Rio de Janeiro and
Los Angeles on an island in the Pacific that’s
become too small for its population.
160 Mark 60 Long Section

Designing at
Studio Odile Decq Nanjing — China 161

a Distance
Odile Decq managed to realize a
museum in Nanjing over Spe.

Text
Femke de Wild

Photos
Roland Halbe
162
Close
to the ci of Nanjing, 300 km west of
Shanghai, lies Tangshan Park. Busy urbanites
can find some much-needed tranquilli
here and, since recently, Fangshan Tangshan
Geopark National Museum. e building,
which looks like it’s part of the landscape, was
designed by Odile Decq.
How did you get the commission?
ODILE DECQ: It was a closed competition,
with four architects participating. I went to
take a look at Fangshan Tangshan Park in
Nanjing, where the building was going to be
situated. In 1993, a male and a female skull of
one of the earliest homo erectus were discovered
here and the place has been a major tourist
a raction ever since. e bones were found in
a cave in a mountain that borders the park.
I visited the cave, which was very impressive.
e location of the building in the park had
already been determined, but I su ested a
different situation, closer to the archaeological
site, and therefore more closely connected
to the mountain. I was given permission to
execute that plan.
Mark 60
Is that where the idea for the distinct shape of
the building came from?
In the design, I played with the undulating lines
of the mountain landscape. At first, I wanted to
situate the museum inside the mountain with
only the façade sticking out. Unfortunately,
because of the strict fire regulations in China,
this wasn’t possible. e building has now been
designed as if it is separated from the mountain
by a crack in the earth’s crust. Hence the wall
at the back of the building. I’ve made the space
between the building and the mountain as
narrow as possible; it’s just wide enough to
allow a fire truck to pass. e landscape
merges with the building via the ramp on
the east side, as if the museum is incorporated
in the landscape.
Do the horizontal lines in the façade refer to the
strata of the mountain?
Yes, they do. is is the first time I ever made a
stone façade; I mostly work with steel and glass.
e client at first wanted that here, too, but I
wanted the stone of the mountain to come back
in the façade. Between the undulating lines of
Long Section
the different floors, I placed a large, stone screen
in front of the windows. I actually tried to work
with locally produced stone, but that became
too expensive. In the end, we decided to use
artificial stone. e façade consists of different,
irregular shapes. It’s designed in great detail.
e museum design is very different than your
previous work.
I always design in context and care lly
consider the commission I’m given. As a result,
my work never becomes gimmic , I don’t use
a trick. I always start from a narrative and
though there are certain principles I oen use,
they can take very different shapes. In my
opinion, every museum, for instance, needs
a promenade. I took that very literally in the
Macro museum in Rome (2011), with a long
walkway across the space. At Tangshang
Museum, the atrium serves as a promenade.
e escalators don’t all run to every floor, which
means you have to walk around the atrium to
the other side to continue moving up or down.
is way, people are enticed to look at the space
from different perspectives.
 Studio Odile Decq Nanjing — China 163

Decq wanted the museum to be closely connected to the mountain and

designed a ramp on the east side that merges landscape and building.
Photo Studio Odile Decq

How did you like working in China?

Photo Studio Odile Decq
You oen hear architects say that projects
have turned out very differently than they
intended, but my experiences were quite good.
e contract stipulated that I was allowed
only three trips to the location at the client’s
expense. When I had to visit the region for
other assignments, I called in a couple of
times anyway, but most of the work was done
through Spe. Fortunately I have designers
from China working at my studio, which
helped with the communication with local
architects. A translator oen sat in as well. We
spent hours and hours Sping. e way of
working is bizarre, but the building has turned
out exactly as I designed it.

Was it your first project in China?

In 2006, I was asked to sit on a jury in China.
When I said I would come, I was asked to
design a small pavilion. e client sent me a
layout and two weeks later we sat down at the
table with the first sketches. I turned out to be
the only candidate. For this project, I’ve only
been on location a couple of times as well. →
164
‘e mayor ended up in jail and the
building was never officially opened’
When I was sent pictures later, it turned out
everything had been executed exactly as I had
intended it. Perhaps it went well both times
because my designs and work are particularly
detailed.
It’s a large building, but it looks rather emp
inside. What’s on show at the museum?
In China, museums are commercial companies.
erefore, the intention was to include many
different nctions in the building: a cinema,
a theatre, lots of shops, cafés and restaurants
and even a research centre. In the end, only the
theatre was realized and there are some small
shops. It is indeed rather emp. Apparently, the
content of the exhibitions is also disappointing.
I myself haven’t been back.
What went wrong?
I got the commission in 2011 and the building
had to be completed in 2014, when the Youth
Mark 60
Olympic Games would take place in Nanjing.
But all kinds of political problems came up. e
mayor ended up in jail on charges of corruption
and in the end, the building was never officially
opened. I did try to get the commission for the
design of the entire interior, but that didn’t
work out. Initially, I was also supposed to do the
landscape design of the park. I’d already made
the drawings, but the commission eventually
went to a local par. Who subsequently copied
my designs almost exactly. Unbelievable that a
design is copied in this way, but the building
and park are a whole as a result.
e cinema was supposed to be in the round,
red building. Why did you choose such a
striking element?
ere is a famous legend about Nanjing. e
area is known for the particularly colourl
stones that you can come across in the
landscape. ey have deep-red colours and
Long Section
Decq made the drawings for the
landscape of the surrounding park, but
a local par was given the commission
and subsequently copied her designs.
Photo Studio Odile Decq
are beautilly spherical. Legend has it that in
prehistoric times, a goddess opened the s and
made a shower of coloured stones come down.
e museum was to also tell this legend, in
addition to the story of the first homo erectus.
Why do people visit the region?
ere are three tourist a ractions in the
mountains that border on the park. In addition
to the bone sites there are thermal baths,
apparently with special qualities. Finally, there
is a display of a special rock. In the 15th century,
when Nanjing was the capital of the empire,
the emperor wanted to hack a rock from the
mountain that was bier than any other rock
whatsoever. He got quite a way, but the project
was never entirely completed. e 20-m-long
rock in Yangshan Quarry, with a diameter of
6 × 6 m, has been cut out for the most part and
is amazing to behold. _
odiledecq.com
 Studio Odile Decq Nanjing — China 165

Bridges lead from the mountain to the third floor

of the building. e space between the building
and the mountain is just wide enough to allow a
fire truck to pass through it.
166 Mark 60 Long Section

To see all levels of the building, visitors

have to walk around the atrium from
one escalator to the other. e space
thus nctions as a promenade.
 Studio Odile Decq Nanjing — China 167

01 Entrance
+1 +3 02
03
Restaurant
Amphitheatre
04 Cinema
05 Shops
06 Exhibition space
07 Offices
08 Laboratories
09 Ramps
10 Atrium

10
10

06
09
06

08
07
฀฀

1
0 +2

03
64 50

10
01 10

02 2 0

04
4 85

05
6

06
3-a
N

Cross Sections
168 Mark 60 Long Section
TNA Too — Japan 169

Room for

Observation
TNA’s latest house
in Too is closely
linked to the street.

Text
Cathelijne Nuijsink

Photos
Daici Ano
170 Mark 60 Long Section

It

was in 2006 that I first met Japanese architect

duo Makoto Takei and Chie Nabeshima of
TNA. We went on a trip together to visit
their recently completed Ring House (Mark
7, page 29), a weekend house in the forests of
Karuizawa. is third built project would boost
their career, and soon be followed by a series
of small-scale projects that were carelly
cra ed out of geographical circumstances.
In the following years, Takei and Nabeshima
made consistent progress with small projects
overseas, but first and foremost garnered
national recognition. Earlier this year, 11 years
a er starting their own firm, the duo received
the prestigious Architecture Institute Japan
Award for their Joshu-Tomioka train station
(Mark 54, page 30), advancing them from
‘emerging architects’ to ‘young established
ones’. eir latest housing project, named
Between Natsume-zaka, is an ode to the great
Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916)
who used to live on the street were the house
is located. In his book Inside My Glass Doors,
he described his personal observations of the
state of the world outside in a manner that
resembles the life inside this new Too house.

What does it mean for you to be the recipient

of the most prestigious architecture award
in Japan?
MAKOTO TAKEI: I see it as only a passing
point in our career. In Japan, it is said that a
great architect should work hard and create
a new pe of architecture. at's exactly what
we want to do.

Where does contemporary Japanese

architecture stand right now? Can you
distinguish it as having an own identi?
I feel that most architecture built in Japan
nowadays lacks spirit and that buildings
with a genuine Japanese identi are few and
far between. Born from Japanese economic
circumstances, a building’s destiny is merely
to be consumed. How boring. I think we
 TNA
When the time comes to widen the
street, the front half of the house
will be dismantled.
Too — Japan
need architecture that is able to remain in
people’s memories. Ryue Nishizawa once said
that architecture in Europe is ‘monumental’.
We think Japanese architecture should also
be more open to history and have a beer
connection to the world. We try to achieve this
by creating buildings that contain some of the
genes of the site.
Your most recent housing project, located
in Too, is another project born out of its
geographical destiny. What was at stake?
e site is located on a street that is scheduled
to be widened. at means that half of the
house is on land that will be cleared at some
stage. We responded to these circumstances
with a house of which half of the structure
can be dismantled, leaving the other half of
the structure intact, without sacrificing the
architectural concept. People usually opt for
an entirely new building as soon as a road
is widened, or they turn the land that is
scheduled to become the road extension into
a temporary parking lot. at means that the
‘A great architect should create
a new pe of architecture’
lifespan of those buildings is very short and
that is exactly the weakness of architecture
in Japan nowadays. We therefore proposed
a house with a long lifespan. Because of the
flexibili of the structure, it will be easy to
repurpose the spaces.
Why did you opt for a grid structure?
Space was our point of departure, rather than
nction – space that generates a varie of
uses. We designed a cubical frame made of
steel that, even when you delete half a span,
retains its structural capaci. In addition, we
used a special though simple joint between the
columns and the beams. When the time comes
to dismantle the front half, it will be easy to
separate the beams from the columns.
Why do you believe this design best fits the
clients’ lifesle?
e clients are a couple that moved from the
countryside to Too. I felt their desire to live
in the big ci wasn’t just a fad. ey were
really on a mission to beauti the ci and
explain Too’s charm to the Tooites. Exactly
171
because they are ‘outsiders’, they are beer
at understanding the charm of the ci than
‘insiders’. e idea of discovering the charm of
the site is very close to our design approach.
As a reinterpretation of the clients’ concept,
we arranged a large fixed framework with
units of 3.6 × 3.6 × 3.6 m. e clients decided
the number, the height and the position of the
floors. It turned out to be a space more rich
than they could ever have imagined.
is house with its many different small levels
reminds me of House NA in Too designed by
Sou Fujimoto (Mark 36, page 148).
Although we think Fujimoto is close to
our thoughts in trying to create a new
environment and a new architecture, there
are also differences. e lifesle as envisioned
by Fujimoto in House NA is rather special.
I believe that housing should not only be
visually open, but also socially. Our client
requested a way of living that stands in
relation to the surroundings. We see the floors
as raised platforms from which to enjoy the
neighbourhood. We like to compare them to the
raised banks of the Kamo River in Kyoto, where
people gather to appreciate the surroundings.
What do the residents especially like about this
house now that they’ve moved in?
e house feels spacious, even though the living
areas are small. And the place is bright, with a
good view.
And what about privacy in this
all-glazed house?
Even with the curtains open, the clients don’t
have to worry about that too much, since
the house is elevated above the street. But
something else is more important. Natsume
Soseki used to live on this street. In his 1915
book, Inside My Glass Doors, he famously
described the events taking place in the vicini
of his house, which he watched through
the glass doors of his study. at’s what the
residents of this house can also do: observe
the ci and the people passing by. _
tna-arch.com
172 Mark 60 Long Section

Le View from the study, at the top of

the house, towards the bedroom.

Opposite e house has a steel frame that

will be easy to dismantle.

Below By composing the house of small

square floors with variable ceiling
heights, an extremely spacious house
has been created.

‘e clients were on a mission to beauti the ci’

TNA Too — Japan 173
174 Mark 60 Long Section

ere are two small apartments that are for

rent on the ground floor and the first floor.
 TNA Too — Japan 175

Site Plan
e do ed lines show
the proposed widening
of the street.

+ 1.5 Cross
06 Section
05

04

+1 +3 08
02 09

03
10

0 +2
01 Rentable unit 1
02 Rentable unit 2 07
03 Entrance porch
01
04 Dining
05 Kitchen
06 Living
07 Storage
08 Bedroom
09 Study
10 Roof terrace
176 Mark 60 Long Section

Reinier de Graaf in the library

of his home in Amsterdam.
 Reinier de Graaf Bookmark 177

‘I
no
longer
dislike
my
profession
at
this
point’ OMA-partner Reinier de
Graaf talks about the role of
reading and writing within
the architect’s office.

Text Photo
Peter Smisek Jeroen Musch
178
e
traditional, well-trodden path for an architect
to get published usually goes like this: design
a visually appealing project, send a press pack
to your news outlet of choice, and wait for the
breathless call from the editor, demanding
exclusivi and more high resolution images.
But there is another way . . .
Which is not to say that Reinier
de Graaf, a partner at OMA and a director
of its mythical research arm AMO, has
not collaborated on a large number of
photogenic projects. De Roerdam, G-Star
Raw Headquarters, the EU’s Barcode flag, the
Timmerhuis – all have graced the pages of
many a glossy magazine. But the expanding
array of opinion columns, essays and lectures
that are published with De Graaf on the by-line
is just as impressive.
Having joined OMA in 1996, De Graaf
has since become one of the most critical
voices in the industry, with contributions
to publications ranging from respected
European dailies and a regular opinion spot
on the mega-blog Dezeen, to more occasional
contributions to establishment glossies such
as e Architectural Review and Architect’s
Journal. With his pical clari and wit, he
discusses his trajectory, influences and how a
commercially successl practice can become
a mouthpiece of critique aimed at a market
system within which it flourishes.
Were you drawn to writing as an architecture
student or does your interest in writing stem
from an earlier period in your life? Did you read
a lot of books growing up?
REINIER DE GRAAF: I wrote a lot and really
Mark 60
enjoyed writing and reading when I was in
secondary school. From the ages of 12 to 18,
I read a lot of books and wrote essays and
reports on them, in multiple languages.
Strangely enough that was all put on
hold when I started studying architecture at
Del Universi of Technology in 1982. Not
until much later, when I started following
theory courses, did it come back. Particularly in
the early years there was a very monomaniac
aitude that you had to learn to design. ere
was a schism between those who apparently
‘When we criticize, people like
had the natural abili to design and those who
didn’t, so at the same time that created a kind
of class distinction at the universi.
ere was so much emphasis on shape,
on architecture, that the education hardly
had any room to engage in any intellectual
pursuits. It’s one of the things that I think
architecture suffers from as a whole: it’s so
hermetic and self-obsessed that it neglects
its context and therefore fails its context. It
neglects to cultivate any curiosi and fails to
communicate with its broader surroundings.
What beer way is there to communicate about
the context than writing? I see a lot of my
writing as a retroactive correction on what I
perceive to be one of the greatest shortcomings
of architecture and also my own education.
e supreme irony is that writing is something
I truly love to do and only picked up again a er
being a student.
What was the difference between the kind
of literature you read in secondary school
compared with what you read now?
ey were all novels, o en compulsory ones,
selected by the school. e obligation to read
these still exists, my eldest son is just about
to enter that phase of his life, and being a part
of the internet generation he is dreading the
whole prospect. But I read and wrote much
more than the prescribed list. Funnily enough
I never read the papers back then.
So which writers or works were influential
to your career as an architecture student
and beyond?
At universi we read Massimo Cacciari and
Manfredo Tari. At the Berlage Institute, a er
I completed my studies in Del , I read a lot
of Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault and all
the philosophers that were being discussed
in the context of late 1980s and early 1990s
architecture. Faced with a lack of commissions,
that’s what a lot of architects spent their time
doing. Peter Eisenman and the whole American
scene at the time put a very strong emphasis
on philosophy and I tried to write that way
as well. Strangely enough, the person whose
writing really gripped me at that time was
Rem [Koolhaas]. is happened well before
Long Section
I entered the office. It was such a wonderl
mix of theorizing and brutali – I enjoyed
the clari that emanated from it, irrespective
of whether I agreed with the positions. If you
read certain things like ‘ e Story of e Pool’,
which was of course a part of Delirious New
York, it was an interesting hybrid between
fiction and the kind of writing you expect to
encounter in the context of architecture theory.
It is something I enjoy, but also something
I try to weave through my own writing:
reflecting on seemingly weird, meaningless,
autobiographical details and speculating on
those experiences to construct a larger vision.
You joined OMA before AMO was established
as a separate enti within the office. Would you
have ever imagined that you’d be able to aain
a position within the firm where you’d actually
have time to write and do research?
Before I joined the office I was unemployed, so
I hadn’t been thinking about that at all! I’d had
about a thousand rejection leers from all of
the offices I applied to. I had my own business
that stopped, but once you’ve worked on your
own, no-one is willing to hire you because they
think you’ll leave at the nearest opportuni. I
was just happy to have a job. ings have gone
ahead step by step and I’ve never really thought
ahead too much. I still don’t. I had an acute
interest in the side of the office that I ended up
in, and for that I’m gratel. I no longer dislike
my profession at this point.
Who are the writers whose work you enjoy
reading?
I like Michel Houellebecq. He’s a terrific writer,
and I admire him for his directness and fearless
broaching of subjects that – even in a free
contemporary world – are hugely contentious.
He also revisits some prevailing consensuses
of the 20th century and subjects them to
rigorous and critical analysis: whether they
still mean anything under the market economy
and how the market economy has hijacked the
sexual and social revolution of the 1960s and
turned it into something totally dystopian. And
of course omas Pikke’s book Capital in the
Twen-First Century was a real eye-opener.
As a partner at OMA, you split your time
between designing and managing projects,
lecturing, writing, teaching . . . Do you ever feel
like you need more focus, or do these diverse
activities stimulate your wrien output in
certain ways that perhaps a purely academic
career would not? Do you feel constrained
by the practice?
No, no. e experiences within the practice
feed the writing, inasmuch as the writing
is based on theorising the experiences. You
need the practical experiences in a real and
 Reinier de Graaf
pressing form to say anything meaningl. A
lot of the problem with architecture theory is
that it projects particular things on a practice
that the writers themselves do not know and
haven’t experienced. We’re faced with a very
schizophrenic situation where those who write
about architecture do not know practice, and
those who practice never manage to convert
their knowledge into writing or any other
communicable form. at is something that our
office is trying to bridge, not as an academic
institution, but simply as an economic enti
to think it applies to everybody except them’
that has to get by and produces thoughts in the
wake of that.
What other things besides the office inspire
and inform your writing? Where does teaching
come in?
Teaching is really the same as writing in
a sense that it gives you space away from
your primary activi to reflect on it as on
a theoretical subject. ey’re oen thought
to be in opposition, but teaching, as writing,
is an additional space in which you can
rther yourself intellectually. In the context
of any advanced universi class, it’s always
ambiguous who’s actually teaching who.
Much of the theoretical output of the office,
whether it’s your or Rem Koolhaas’s writings
or various AMO publications, is critical of
the conditions and constrains imposed on the
architects by their clients and the neoliberal
economic system. From a purely business side
of things, do you think this helps the firm?
People have asked me this before, even when
writing reactions and reviews of the things
I’ve published. ‘at’s rich, coming from you,’
they’d say. I have not yet discerned in any way
that it discourages potential clients. In fact,
I believe it does quite the opposite. Maybe
it’s the old-fashioned, romantic notion of
the architect, that people expect him to be
stubborn, critical and difficult. I don’t think
any of the writing coming out of the office has
ever discouraged a potential client. e pe
of clients that we have all aspire to criticali.
And even when they don’t, they all aspire to be
different than their competitors, who might
also want to engage us. So when we criticize,
people like to think it applies to everybody
except them. Even potential clients.
In one of your Dezeen columns you wrote that
as the practice of architecture becomes more
fragmented, an ever-larger number of ever-
smaller architecture offices produces its own
rhetoric and theory, but that nobody outside of
architecture listens, marginalizing the position
of the architect. Do you still feel that way
given that one could argue that OMA and you
personally contribute to this phenomenon?
Bookmark
Since the office is so large and influential, it’s
easy to make the case that we contributed to
every single disaster that has hit – particularly
Dutch – architecture. Be that as it may, our
office is not becoming fragmented and there are
a fair amount of people that still read our prose.
It’s a common misconception, but our prose is
not geared towards any particular form of self-
promotion, because as you pointed out, it could
even be seen as a risk in scaring off potential
clients. Once the prose becomes overburdened
by the need for self-advertisement, which
oen happens in smaller offices, then you risk
becoming the voice in the desert that nobody
listens to. Our writing serves a very different
purpose and, I also have to say, is remarkably
unpretentious. I write in English despite not
being a native speaker and so does Rem, which
creates a particular kind of language that can
sound verbose, but the positions are oen
quite mundane.
Given the breadth of the work you conduct,
from research reports and publications by
AMO, to your personal writings for various
outlets, I would imagine there’s a world of
difference in how each of these things are
approached.
ere is a clear difference. Of course we write
clear, explanatory texts and introductions to
projects that are wrien to sway the client to
give us the job, and that’s a particular sort of
writing where you edit a hell of a lot and you
carelly nnel the reader into the inevitable
conclusion that you’re the man for the job and
the answer to all his problems. It is writing as
a supreme cra, but there is always a hunch
that is ndamentally honest, otherwise you
couldn’t write a text like that. Other things
I write under my name, and I wouldn’t have
had all these opportunities if I didn’t have the
position that I have. Nevertheless, writing is
something ndamentally personal that I do
and I think people understand that. I have to
be somewhat carel not to openly damage our
office’s interests, but there is a lot of leeway.
In my columns I can be a lot more candid, and
the whole principle is based on displaying a
level of candour that you would not expect
from somebody you think would be speaking
on behalf of the office.
What is your opinion on geing feedback on
your work online? Do you take those comments
to heart?
Absolutely. If there ever is a response to a
column published in a newspaper it’s usually
someone else’s column, where they would not
so much criticize your position as much as
articulating their own position against what
you’ve wrien. is is ndamentally different
than the more philistine debate that takes place
179
on the internet. I like it, I can take a lot, and
I can even agree with some of the comments,
but they don’t faze me. It’s a kind of carelly
nnelled hooliganism that is oen nice. Also,
when I write for an online outlet, I do it in a
way to provoke these kinds of reactions, so
I take the fact of whether something’s online
or not into account before I begin.
What about writing a book in your own name?
I already have a title and a preoccupation
that about 55 per cent of my wrien output
adheres to. e title of the book is going to be
e Century at Never Happened. It’s largely
the position I took in the essay I wrote for e
Architectural Review, based on Pikke’s book
Capital in the Twen-First Century, in which
the 20th century is largely seen as an economic
and perhaps a cultural anomaly, with modern
architecture as a symptom of this. However,
we’re educated to believe that those past
conditions are an everlasting truth, which is
rather disconcerting. I write about a number
of 20th-century phenomena in that book that
simply seem to have evaporated into thin air
– think of resident participation in the design
of large housing projects, the phenomenon of
the architect as civil servant, or state provision
and planning of housing. Nobody remembers
them anymore, even though they were normal
not so long ago, so it’s a book about those
disappearances as a nction of amnesia, which
is now, sadly, a part of our reali. _
Reinier de Graaf
recommends
Michel Houellebecq, Les Particules élémentaires,
Flammarion, Paris, 1998. English translation:
e Elementary Particles, Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 2000
Jean Baudrillard, Amérique, Grasset, Paris, 1986.
English translation: America, Verso,
New York, 1989
Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaen,
Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin/Lausanne, 1930-1943.
English translation: e Man Without Qualities,
Picador, New York, 1995
Philip Roth, e Plot Against America, Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2004
Eric Hobsbawm, e Age of Extremes: e Short
Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, Michael Joseph,
London, 1994
omas Pikey, Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Éditions
du Seuil, Paris, 2013, English translation: Capital
in the Twen-First Century, Harvard Universi
Press, Cambridge (MA), 2014
180 Mark 60

Tools
 Tools 181

‘Hi h
ener rices
are
o enin
Merck works on the
next-generation of
solar cells, page 190

new rowth
markets for
renewable
ener sources’
182 Mark 60 Tools

Sanitary

Showerhead
Closer from Zucchei
Diego Grandi designed a flexible showerhead,
Closer, for Zucchei. It reinterprets the popular
image of a showerhead while recalling the
aesthetics of a lamp. A cylindrical counterweight
keeps the showerhead stable in any position, at any
height. e object can be adjusted and extended
simply and intuitively. Each of its three joints
moves freely and multidirectionally, permiing the
user to compose numerous spatial configurations
while controlling and directing the jet of water for
what Grandi calls ‘a relaxing moment of wellbeing’.
zuccheidesign.it
 Sanitary 183

Sanitary Range
Inspira from Roca
e Inspira collection is made up of a simple
and efficient range of products that affords
flexibili of choice. e pieces are available
in three shapes – round, so and square – a
wide varie for all sles of interior design.
Inspira toilets represent the new Roca rimless
generation, with seats and covers made
from durable Supralit. Basins made from
Fineceramic have deep, spacious bowls and
smooth surfaces that make them easy to clean.
Furniture with exclusive finishes includes
universal two-drawer vani units designed to
hold all pes of Inspira basins.
roca.com

Bath Module
Vipp982 from Vipp
‘Vipp has been all about nctional
products for bathroom and
kitchen – ever since Holger Nielsen
created the first Vipp bin in 1939.
It has been our dream to expand
our bathroom line with a module
that matches our accessories in
design and nctionali,’ says
Vipp CEO Kasper Egelund. Made
of powder-coated stainless steel,
the Vipp bath module has rubber-
clad handles, a tabletop of DuPont
Corian, and an integrated tap in
solid stainless steel, all designed
by Morten Bo Jensen in a sle that
complements the rest of the Vipp
assortment.
vipp.com
184 Mark 60 Tools

Sanitary Collection
Ino from Laufen
Ino, a new bathroom line from
Laufen, is the work of French
designer Toan Nguyen, who took
advantage of the possibilities of
SaphirKeramik, a dense, strong
and durable material developed in-
house by Laufen. Ino is set apart
by simple lines, elegant shapes
and so yet stable walls. One
remarkable piece is a washbasin
with seamlessly integrated
console. Made from Sentec, the
freestanding Ino bathtub with
integrated headrest comes in
two sizes: 1700 × 750 and 1800 ×
800 mm. Also available is a set of
bathroom rniture.
laufen.com

Sanitary Series
BeeLux Shape from Bee
One of Bee’s iconic products is BeeLux,
a steel bath enhanced with a glass-like enamel
finish. e highlight of its so curvaceous
shape is an extra-flat rim. e contours of
the original bath were invisible following
installation, because it wasn’t a freestanding
object. e latest model, BeeLux Shape, is
exposed on all sides. It is supported by an open
steel frame which is available in six colours.
Complementing the bath are a washbasin and
accessories, all of which embrace the concept
of ‘framing’ to form a coherent sanitary line.
bee.de
Sanitary 185

Bathroom Series
Cape Cod from Duravit
Philippe Starck drew inspiration for his Duravit bathroom series from Cape
Cod, a popular peninsula on the northeast coast of the United States. Countertop
washbowls have a rounded form and are made from DuraCeram, a new high-
grade material with a robust character and a luxurious finish. Rims as thin as
5 mm are possible with DuraCeram. e Cape Cod bathtub also relies on a new
mae-finished material, DuraSolid A. Options include an integrated air-whirl
system and/or Bluetooth-compatible sound system.
duravit.com
186 Mark 60 Tools

Shower-Control Module
Axor One from Axor Hansgrohe
Axor One, Hansgrohe’s first all-in-one interactive shower-control
module, is the work of designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby,
who aimed for something that would be intuitive and responsive
yet not cluer the shower with unnecessary controls. e result is a
system that activates and deactivates water flow by a mere tap. Clear
symbols indicate specific water outlets: you can choose between
overhead, hand or side shower. Temperature is set by turning a
central dial, and a small lever directly below regulates water volume.
It’s possible to turn multiple water outlets on or off simultaneously.
hansgrohe.com
axor-design.com
 Sanitary 187

Shower Channels
CleanLine from Geberit
It’s not easy to keep dirt and bacteria
from accumulating beneath the covers
of conventional shower channels.
Geberit’s hygienic CleanLine series
solves the problem. Water flows directly
from channel to drain, there are no
hidden places for dirt to lodge, and the
channel is easy to detach and clean.
Installing a CleanLine shower channel
is uncomplicated, and the accompanying
kit ensures a securely sealed result.
Channels can be cut to the size of the
shower area and can be installed very
close to the wall or at the centre of the
space.
geberit.com

New Installation Technique

Glazed-Steel Basins from Alape
Alape developed its first glazed-steel washbasins in 1997.
A new installation technique puts the basin’s 3-mm-thin
edge in the limelight. is narrow edge projects 25 mm
from the countertop or base unit of the built-in basin,
while the coexisting recess disappears below the surface.
e result is not just visually interesting; it also serves a
nctional purpose by reducing the loss of storage space
and affording a generous and comfortable basin depth.
alape.com
188 Mark 60 Tools

Toilet
Idea SmartWash from Kale
Kale’s Idea SmartWash WC pan is hygienic and easy to clean. e
product’s rimless construction prevents the formation of dirt and bacteria.
e wall-hung toilet dispenses water from a small distribution area to
wash the entire inner surface, thanks to the volumetric weight and speed
of water. e rimless design and ingenious washing system mean the use
of fewer cleaning products and thus a lower environmental impact. e
straightforward design of Kale’s Idea SmartWash WC pan is an aractive
choice for both private and professional clients.
kale.com.tr

Fiings
CL.1 from Dornbracht
Dornbracht’s CL.1 bathroom fiings combine straight lines with gentle
curves. Handles come in two finishes, smooth or textured, options in
keeping with the consumer’s increasing desire for materials with a
tactile quali and products with the potential for individualization.
Punctuating the spray face are 40 individual jets of water that yield
an efficient flow rate of just 3.9 litres per minute. ‘CL’ stands for brand
slogan ‘Culturing Life’, and the number one refers to the first product
to emerge from Dornbracht’s new direction in design.
dornbracht.com
Sanitary 189

Sanitary Range
Silenio from Kaldewei
With the Kaldewei Silenio product family, bath and washbasin
form a harmonious whole. Silenio is distinguished by its so
interior lines. e bathtub’s characteristic features are a flat
rim that measures a mere 20 mm and extra sharp corner radii.
Matching Silenio washbasins pick up on the organic design of
the Silenio bath. Flowing gently inwards from both sides are
lines that open out into a so hollow: a lovely contrast to the
washbasin’s steeply falling rear section and spacious surround,
which provides plen of room for fiings and accessories.
kaldewei.com
190
Mounted with steel ropes, OPV modules
can create a lightweight, curtain-wall-pe
of façade that generates electrici from
sunlight. Blue OPVs were already in use,
now grey modules are available too.
Merck
Converting
sunlight into
energy with a
modern façade
Climate change and high energy
prices are opening new growth
markets for renewable energy
sources. Photovoltaics play a key
role here, making it possible to use
solar energy efficiently. Merck, a
leading science and technology
company, provides innovative, user-
friendly materials and formulae
for today's and the next-generation
of solar cells. e company is
dedicated to the development
of, among other things, organic
photovoltaics (OPVs). OPVs can
be applied in lightweight devices
that are entirely compatible with
modern architecture. Aer all,
Mark 60
façades and roofs offer plen of
space for the climate-friendly
generation of electrici generated
from sunlight.
Merck recently announced
that semi-transparent grey-
coloured OPV modules are now
available on the market. e new
materials, which were developed
together with Belectric OPV, were
presented to the public in October
2015 at the Adaptive Architectures
and Smart Materials Conference
in Chicago. e showpiece,
using grey freeform modules,
consisted of several laminated
glass panes mounted with steel
Tools
ropes to create a lightweight,
curtain-wall-pe façade. is
offers unlimited design options
for modern architectural accents
while maintaining transparency
and shape.
Merck and Belectric
OPV previously presented lively
blue-coloured OPVs, which were
already used in installations
in the German Pavilion at the
EXPO 2015 in Milan, Italy and
in the headquarters building of
the African Union Securi and
Peace Council in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Brian Daniels, Head
of the Advanced Technologies
business unit at Merck, says:
‘Many architects indicated that a
grey colour would significantly
increase the usage of OPVs in
building integration. Following
the installations at the Expo
in Milan, we set an a ressive
target to develop such a solution.’
Ralph Pätzold, CEO of Belectric
OPV ads: ‘e new grey is a key
for the wider adoption of OPVs.
We are very proud that – in the
joint effort with Merck – we
could bring the new material to
a manufacturing quali in very
short time.’
merckgroup.com

Zeitraum
A love of wood led Birgit
Gämmerler to establish Zeitraum
in 1990. Gämmerler, who studied
industrial design, wanted to honour
wood as a living material with
Honouring wood with her clear minimalistic designs,
and create rniture that was well
minimalistic designs thought out and ecological but still
sensual. e company has stayed
true to its original values and the
pure material quali continues
to be its trademark.
Zeitraum uses only
healthy, solid hardwood and
has a sound knowledge of all its
specific characteristics. At present
the woods they work with are
primarily oak, ash and walnut.
e crasman’s care begins with
the selection and bringing together
of individual woods and ends
with the treatment of the surface.
All woods used by Zeitraum
stem from sustainable forests.
Wood is a renewable resource
and CO2 neutral. Compared with
other materials its use requires
the lowest amount of energy.
Furniture with an exceptionally
long lifespan is produced through
carel design and manufacture.
M11 by Mathias Hahn is a small, versatile table and
combines well with Nonoto and Nonoto Comfort chairs.
191
e wood surfaces of Zeitraum
rniture are impregnated with
pure natural oils. ese are
applied to the precision-ground
surfaces and then massaged
in by hand, creating a sil
smooth, resistant surface. e
oil impregnates the wood to a
depth of at least 2 mm during
this procedure. is natural
surface treatment is free of
contaminants. e wood can
breathe, absorb and release
moisture, unlike varnished,
coated wood. e porous surface
prevents static electrici and
therefore a racts no dust, which
is especially important for
people with allergies. e natural
colour variations of the wood are
retained even aer the surface
treatment.
Zeitraum’s latest products
clearly illustrate the company’s love
of wood. e M11 tables, designed
by Ma hias Hahn, shelving series
3°Regal and the Nonoto and
Nonoto Comfort chairs are all
fabricated from solid wood and
available in various editions.
zeitraum-moebel.de
Shelving series 3°Regal is made of
solid wood without screws or glue
joints. e new Nonoto and Nonoto
Comfort chairs are combined here
with the Cena – hyperelliptical table.
192 Mark 60 Exit

Exit
Mark 61 April – May 2016

Ken Takahashi
Japanese architect Ken Takahashi added
curved elements to the wooden frame of
his Noritama House in Too, blocking
direct views, but introducing new
perspectives and generating special light
conditions. It’s a trick, the architect says,
to give the small, three-storey house a
different kind of largeness, betraying the
physical limitations.

Also
Torun Concert Hall by Menis Aquitectos

Rivesaltes Internment
Camp Memorial by Rudy Riccioi

And
An interview with Danish landscape
architect Stig Andersson
 Out Now
Five formulas for
future-proof offices

frameweb.com/frame

A highlight of Olafur Eliasson's Reality

Machines exhibition at Moderna Museet
in Stockholm is published in Frame 108.
Photo Danica O. Kus
 MOR P H DUO
DININ G L OU N GE
K ANAPEE & LOUNGE SOFA
&
DE SIGN BY F OR MS T E L L E 2 0 15

zeitraum-moebel.de