Focus sur les plus beaux villages visibles à travers le monde, du Mali au Tibet en passant par l’Iran. Cette sélection de photographies a été faite par différents photographes aux quatre coins du monde où les couleurs et les architectures se font écho ou contrastent selon les niveaux de vie de chacun.
Popeye Village à Malte, par Mosin.
Village au Niger, Mali, par Yann Arthus-Bertrand.
Mountain Village en Iran, par Mohammadreza Momeni.
Village africain, par Michael Poliza.
Village au Tibet, par Coolbie Re.
Gàsadalur Village aux Iles Féroé, par Gareth Codd.
Fort Bourtange aux Pays-Bas, par Jan Koster.
Village dans le Sud-Ouest de l’Angleterre, par Bob Small.
Village caché dans le Sud de la Chine, par Christian Ortiz.
Hobbiton Village, lieu du tournage du Seigneur des Anneaux en Nouvelle-Zélande, par Weta Workshop.
Village de La Spezia en Italie, par James Brandon.
“This place used to be a farm; the chickens and the pigs used to walk around here,” says Baas, who we interviewed in his office in the converted attic of the former farmhouse. “Now we turned it into a design studio.”
Maarten Baas’ offices
Baas’ office is home to the original Smoke Chair that he produced for his graduation project while at Design Academy Eindhoven, which is now manufactured by Dutch design brand Moooi.
Maarten Baas’ original Smoke Chair
“This was the prototype on which Moooi based the Smoke Chair,” Baas says. “It’s actually burnt furniture with an epoxy resin that sucks into the charcoal. It has been reproduced many times by Moooi, and still we make unique pieces here at the farm.”
Clay furniture by Maarten Baas
Baas, who moved to the farm in 2009 with fellow designer Bas den Herder, converted the barn into a workshop where he produces other pieces of furniture such as his famous Clay series, created by moulding a synthetic clay around a metal frame.
“We squeeze our hands in the clay, you can see the fingerprints,” explains Baas. “After that, it dries out and it stays like furniture.”
Shooting for Maarten Baas’ Grandmother Clock
Downstairs, Baas is in the middle of filming for his new Grandmother Clock, commissioned by Carpenters Workshop Gallery, in which an old lady seems to draw the time using a marker pen from inside the clock.
Grandfather and Grandmother Clocks by Maarten Baas, presented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery at Design Miami 2013
“You’re very lucky to be here just at the moment that we are filming the new Grandmother Clock,” Baas says. “What you see here is a little cabin in which the grandmother will sit and a video that is recording her. The grandmother will indicate the time every minute with a marker. She will draw the big hand and the small hand and after a minute she wipes away the big hand, does one minute later and like that she goes around the clock.”
Maarten Baas’ homemade sauna in an old wooden caravan
Baas then takes us outside to show us his workshop in the barn, as well as a small sauna he made inside an old wooden caravan, before showing us a limited edition piece of Smoke furniture that is in the process of being charred with a blow-torch.
“This is a chair that we are burning for a client,” Baas starts to say, before having second thoughts about explaining the process in detail. “Ah, f**k it,” he says. “I’m not going to say.”
Maarten Baas. Copyright: Dezeen
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
Visitors to this lakeside concrete tower in the Netherlands can scale its walls, jog up to an observation deck on its roof, or sail a zip wire across the water from a balcony (+ slideshow).
Designed by Eindhoven studio Ateliereen Architecten, the Beldert Beach Adventure Tower is part of a outdoor activities park surrounding Beldert Lake in the centre of the Netherlands.
Colourful treads are set into the concrete on two sides of the structure, allowing climbers to scramble their way up the entire 19-metre height of the tower and arrive at a viewing platform on the roof.
Those less willing to climb can take the stairs, which wind up through the centre of the tower but burst through the walls in three places before ending up at the top.
“Functionality and visibility were the basic principles for this design,” said architect Bram Hurkens. “We choose a clear shape, which is formed by the stairs, going inside and outside of the structure.”
Bright yellow balustrades allow the staircase to stand out against the concrete, and match one of the three colours used for the climbing treads.
“This way the route up is marked and the building has a cheerful and sunny appearance,” added Hurkens.
The zip line is attached to a balcony 11 metres above the ground, while a kiosk is located at the base of the tower offering drinks and snacks.
The tower was constructed from 11 prefabricated concrete modules stacked on top of one another.
“The tower is designed in such way that the centre of gravity is always located above the footprint,” said the architect.
The Beldert Beach logo was imprinted into the concrete during the casting process.
Here’s a project description from Ateliereen Architecten:
Adventure tower in concrete at Beldert Beach
For our client in the Betuwe – Holland Evenementen Groep – Ateliereen designed an adventure tower at Beldert Beach, which is a recreational lake.
Construction process
The tower can be used for climbing and other group activities and there is a small kiosk included in the building. There is a viewing platform at a height of nineteen meters, which offers a view over the water, the wide area and the Holland Evenementen Groep.
Construction process
Functionality and visibility were the basic principles for this design. We choose a clear shape, which is formed by the stairs, going inside and outside of the structure. The stairs have a prominent, bright yellow colour. This way the route up is marked and the building has a cheerful and sunny appearance.
The tower is constructed in prefab concrete rings, a robust material with a high-quality finish. The function of the tower is recognisable because the coloured climbing routes contrast with the silver-like background. The project is an addition to the activities of the Holland Evenementen Groep and a new impulse for the beach.
The eleven prefabricated concrete rings all have unique dimensions. In the rings at the top, the logo of Beldert Beach is poured into the surface, so no flags are needed.
The rings are approximately 3 x 5 meters. The peculiarity of casting these rings is that only one mold is used, which had to be converted after each ring working from the biggest element to the smallest.
Moreover, the architectural concrete requires a high quality surface with little room for errors. The different sloping walls have been an extra challenge whilst pouring and stacking. The tower is designed in such way that the centre of gravity is always located above the footprint, also during the stacking of the rings.
This movie shows how a redundant Second World War bunker in the Netherlands was turned into a sculptural visitor attraction by slicing it down the middle to reveal its insides.
The bunker was built in 1940 to shelter up to 13 soldiers during bombing raids and the intervention by Dutch studios RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon reveals the small, dark spaces inside, which are normally hidden from view.
The movie shows a diamond wire saw being used to cut a straight section through the centre of the monolithic structure, and a crane lifting it away to create a narrow slit.
It took 40 days to slice through the solid concrete bunker, which was one of 700 constructed along the New Dutch Waterline, a series of water-based defences used between 1815 and 1940 to protect the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem.
“Our aim with the project was to question the policies on monuments by doing this intervention,” Ronald Rietveld of RAAAF told Dezeen, adding that the bunker was subsequently elevated from a municipal monument to a national monument and is now part of the New Dutch Waterline’s bid for UNESCO World Heritage status.
The designers also constructed a set of stairs to connect the nearby road to a path that leads through the centre of the bunker onto a wooden boardwalk raised above the flooded area.
“The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war,” said Rietveld in a statement about the project.
Visible from the busy A2 motorway, the bunker is part of a 20-year masterplan begun in 2000 to transform the Dutch Waterline into a national park. It was completed in 2010 but was officially opened last year and recently won the Architectural Review Award 2013 for Emerging Architecture.
Here’s a project description from RAAAF:
Bunker 599
In a radical way this intervention sheds new light on the Dutch policy on cultural heritage. At the same, it time makes people look at their surroundings in a new way. The project lays bare two secrets of the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military line of defence in use from 1815 until 1940 protecting the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem by means of intentional flooding.
A seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced open. The design thereby opens up the minuscule interior of one of NDW’s 700 bunkers, the insides of which are normally cut off from view completely. In addition, a long wooden boardwalk cuts through the extremely heavy construction. It leads visitors to a flooded area and to the footpaths of the adjacent natural reserve. The pier and the piles supporting it remind them that the water surrounding them is not caused by e.g. the removal of sand but rather is a shallow water plain characteristic of the inundations in times of war.
The sliced up bunker forms a publicly accessible attraction for visitors of the NDW. It is moreover visible from the A2 highway and can thus also be seen by tens of thousands of passers-by each day. The project is part of the overall strategy of RAAAF | Atelier de Lyon to make this unique part of Dutch history accessible and tangible for a wide variety of visitors. Paradoxically, after the intervention Bunker 599 became a Dutch national monument.
Dutch studio NL Architects used turquoise-coloured bricks to build this apartment block in Rotterdam, which staggers at the top to make room for sunny balconies on one side (+ slideshow).
NL Architects was one of seven firms invited to design buildings for a new residential development in the Nieuw-Crooswijk neighbourhood. Each architect was encouraged to include “elaborate details” in their designs to give variety to the different facades.
This 15-storey tower is the tallest building within its surroundings, so the architects staggered the five uppermost floors to create south-facing sun decks that aren’t shaded beneath the roof of the floor above.
Each floor is the same size, which means these upper storeys project outwards on the opposite side of the building to create the impression that the building is leaning over.
“We wanted to displace the floors in a way that would create a sunny terrace on one side and an interesting facade on the other,” architect Kamiel Klaasse told Dezeen, describing the overall effect as a “freaky cornice”.
The designers named the building Kuifje, the Dutch name for Tintin, to draw comparisons between the hairstyle of the famous cartoon character and the unusual profile of the tower.
Rather than matching the red brick of its neighbours, the walls of the tower are built from turquoise bricks that were made by a process called engobing.
“The aqua-marine effect is caused by something we call engobe, which includes a coloured clay slip coated in this case with copper oxide,” said Klaasse.
Two apartments are contained on each of the building’s 14 main floors, creating a total of 28 units that each feature one double bedroom, an open-plan kitchen and living room, and a study.
Apartments on the regular floors don’t feature sun decks, but do come with smaller recessed balconies.
Nieuw-Crooswijk is a residential area in Rotterdam, strategically located near the city centre and Kralingse Bos, a beautiful park. “Everything within 10 minutes.” Large parts have recently been demolished and will soon be reconstructed.
Seven architecture offices were invited to contribute to a differentiated ‘cityscape’. The objective was to create expressive architecture; the focus on refining the facades by to introducing elaborate details; accentuating entrances, articulating bay windows and balconies, introducing intricate brickwork, pronounced window frames and delicate fences: sculptural on the micro scale.
Each of the invited offices designed several blocks that are sprinkled around the area. In order to manage the resulting complexity an experimental organisational system was invented: one single ‘back office’ would draw up all plans and develop them into coherent architecture. ABT is responsible for what is ‘under the hood’; the selected architects can as such concentrate on detailing the facades…
The developer, Ontwikkelings Combinatie Nieuw Crooswijk/Proper-Stok Groep, asked NL Architects to design several of what were called ‘specials’: seven apartment blocks that presumably will play an important role in the area for their position or height.
B05 is part of a series of 7 designs for Nieuw Crooswijk that all emphasise a building part, mostly the outdoor space, to create a both functional and sculptural quality.
B05, or Kuifje (Tintin), is positioned in the second block along the Boezemlaan that is now under construction. B05 is the tallest structure in this cluster; a 15 stories tower, two apartments per floor. The first 10 floor go up straight, but after reaching the maximum height of the neighbours, the building starts deforming.
Concept diagram
The highest floors lean forward, piercing through the building line, creating a distinct silhouette. A kind of super sized cornice comes into being.
The standard floors all feature a loggia facing south west. By pushing the upper floors the penthouses can all feature an additional balcony over the full width of the apartment with a sensational view over the skyline of Rotterdam.
Location: Boezemlaan, Nieuw Crooswijk, Rotterdam Client: OCNC, Woonstad Rotterdam, Proper-Stok Groep, ERA Contour Program: housing (28 units), retail space, total 3,600 sqm Process: design 2008, start construction 2010, completion 2013 NL Architects: Pieter Bannenberg, Walter van Dijk, Kamiel Klaasse Project Architect: Sarah Möller Collaborators: Thijs van Bijsterveldt, Wim Sjerps, Stefan Schülecke, Florent Le Corre, Gerbrand van Oostveen, Gen Yamamoto Structural Engineering and Working Drawings: Adviesbureau voor Bouwtechniek (ABT) Contractor: ERA Contour
A collection of vintage Aston Martins can be glimpsed through the fritted glass facade of this house in Maastricht, the Netherlands, by Dutch studio Wiel Arets Architects.
Named V House, the three-storey residence is sandwiched between two historic buildings in a part of the city where new structures have to match the scale of their surroundings.
Photograph by Bas Princen
Wiel Arets Architects designed the building with an asymmetric glass facade so that the edge of the roof slopes between the eaves of its neighbours, creating an angular plane facing up towards the sky.
The glazed wall is fritted at the base to maintain some privacy for residents, while thin curtains hang behind.
In contrast, the rear facade is made up concrete frames infilled with windows. A large void opens the ground floor up to the elements, creating a space for storing around seven or eight vintage cars.
“Due to the house’s very narrow site, the intention was to increase the amount of natural daylight that enters it, at both its front and rear,” project architect Alex Kunnen told Dezeen.
“Without the void that has been cut into the maximum volume in the rear, the house would have been far too dark. And so the fully glazed front facade and the back void work in tandem,” added the architect.
Two separate staircases lead up from the parking level to the first floor above. The first is a “fast” stair that ascends to every floor, while the second is a “slow” route that climbs gently towards a living room at the back of the house.
“It was always the intention to have two paths of circulation,” said Kunnen, “foremost for safety reasons due to the house’s large size, but also because the multiple paths of circulation create various cinematographic scenes throughout the house while they are being experienced.”
A fully glazed living room is contained within a suspended structure, hanging from a pair of I-beams that span the site at the rear. A combined kitchen and dining room sit just beyond and features a 3.5-metre cantilevered dining table.
The bedroom occupies the second floor, alongside an office that can be transformed into a guest suite by folding a bed down from the wall.
Glass doors open out to one roof terrace at the rear, plus a staircase leads up to a second terrace at the very top of the building.
Storage is built into the walls to minimise clutter, and heating and cooling systems are built into the floors.
Residents use iPhones to remotely open and close the house’s entrances, so there are no handles or keyholes anywhere around the exterior.
Photography is by Jan Bitter, apart from where otherwise stated.
Here’s a project description from Wiel Arets Architects:
V House
V House was constructed for a couple that collects vintage cars, and is stitched within the medieval tapestry of historic Maastricht. The city dictates all new structures remain within the envelope of pre-existing buildings, and so a cut was created in the house’s front façade to generate a triangulated surface, which leads from one neighbour’s sloped roof to the opposite neighbour’s vertical bearing wall.
As the house’s site is long and narrow, voids were cut into the maximum permitted volume to ensure that natural light spills throughout the interior. The ground floor is both open to the exterior elements and sunken to the rear of the site, which makes possible the maximum two-story height allowance. A covered portion of this exterior space serves as an outdoor parking garage for the owners’ collection of Aston Martins.
As the house finds refuge between two historical buildings, it is a burst of modernity within this currently gentrifying neighborhood of Maastricht. The house is enormous, totaling 530 m2, and is entered through two oversized sliding glass doors that perforate its front façade. These doors serve as the house’s main entry and open to either their left or right for entry by foot, and both simultaneously retract to allow the entry of automobiles.
Due to safety and privacy concerns, these glass entry doors have no handles or keyholes and are instead are remotely opened from any iPhone, from anywhere in the world. For further privacy the house’s front façade was fritted with a gradient pattern of dots, which disperse in placement as the house rises towards the sky and focus at a distance to compose an image of curtains fluttering in the wind. Actual curtains align the interior of the front façade to afford additional privacy.
Circulation throughout the house occurs via two paths. A ‘slow’ stair leads from the ground floor to the expansive living room, which is connected to the partially raised kitchen and dining areas by a small ramp. A ‘fast’ stairwell traverses the entire height of the house and, together with the platform elevator, allows for direct vertical shortcuts to all levels of living.
Thus this house, with its multiple circulation interventions, such as its living room ramp and ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ paths, is organised not around the traditional notion of stacked floors and is instead organised around its circulatory section. At the apex of this ‘fast’ route is the entrance to an expansive roof terrace that’s also the most public space of the house, as it offers panoramic views over the spired roofline of Maastricht.
The living room has been suspended from two I-beams that span two masonry bearing walls that surround the rear of the site. Steel tension rods measuring 5×10 cm extend from these I-beams into the almost fully glazed façade of the living room, which allows its volume to float above the Aston Martins below. For privacy reasons, this glazing was treated with a highly reflective coating that casts a hue of chartreuse or amber depending on the season and angle of the sun. Only when inhabiting the master bedroom is this hanging of the living room apparent, as the I-beams are visible from the master bedroom, which opens onto the living room’s roof, which functions as a private terrace for the owners.
Heating and cooling is provided via a concrete core activation system concealed within the floors and ceilings of the house, while all storage is built into the circulatory areas in order to divide spaces and define rooms. These custom designed storage units also outfit the office space, where they conceal a bed that can be lowered to accommodate temporary visitors, such as the owners’ now grown children. All storage areas recede in prominence due to their fluid integration, which allows the house’s interior to remain flexible and open for ephemeral definition.
The one-piece custom designed kitchen was constructed in stainless steel, and the dining table, which is connected to it, cantilevers 3.5 m toward the front façade. The custom furnishings and storage spaces, together with the in-situ concrete and multiple roof terraces, make the V’ house an expression of free space in a regulated heritage context.
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our next movie from Eindhoven, Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Formafantasma show us their experiments with unusual materials including fish skin, cow bladders, animal blood and even lava.
Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Formafantasma. Copyright: Dezeen
Italian designers Farresin and Trimarchi, who met at Design Academy Eindhoven and set up Formafantasma in the small Dutch city after graduating, have become well-known for their interesting use of materials.
The duo’s latest project involves melting down volcanic rock from Mount Etna in Sicily.
“We are conducting some really simple experiments by remelting lava,” Farresin tells us when we visited their studio during Dutch Design Week.
Some of Formafantasma’s experiments with melting lava
“We are working with basalt fibres, which is this really interesting material that we found. It is similar to glass fibre, but is entirely produced by the melting of lava. Because of the chemical components of lava, you can create fibres with it.”
Samples Formafantasma made from basalt fibre
Farresin shows us two applications of the material, a textile made from woven threads of basalt fibre as well as a ceramic-like material, which is made from layers of this textile heated in a kiln.
Plate made from basalt rock
“We put it in a ceramic oven and control [the temperature] so that the basalt fibre does not melt completely and turns into a more structural material,” Farresin explains.
“What we like about these skins, which we got from a company in Iceland, is that they have been discarded by the food industry,” he says. “We are actually continuing the investigation of these materials and are [currently] designing a piece for a company using fish skins.”
The Craftica collection also included water containers made from animal bladders, which Trimarchi shows us next.
“These are from cows and, again, they come from the food industry,” he says. “Usually these are used in Italy to make cases for mortadella [an Italian sausage].”
Lighting made from inflated cow baldders
Farresin adds: “We still find the material fascinating, so we thought to use them in lighting. We made a construction using the valve of a bike so that we can basically dry the piece and inflate it directly on the LED light source.”
The first is bois durci, a nineteenth-century plastic made from sawdust and animal blood. Then he shows us pieces of shellac, a natural polymer secreted by lac bugs, a small parasitic insect native to India and Thailand.
Trimarchi says that, since the Botanica project, they have been looking into better methods of producing the material as well as ways of using it.
“Something we are really trying to investigate is to make the production process of shellac more efficient,” he explains.
Farresin adds: “Nowadays it is just farmed by small communities in India and Thailand. We see a parallel between this and silk production, but the farming is really difficult.”
“We are interested in getting in touch with institutions in India to see if we can participate in improving the bug farming there.”
Our MINI Paceman in Eindhoven
We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.
Movie: in this exclusive interview, Rem Koolhaas tells Dezeen why the colossal new De Rotterdam tower is the most visible OMA skyscraper yet. “Nobody will be able to avoid” seeing it, he says.
Located on the south bank of Rotterdam’s Maas river, De Rotterdam is a 150-metre structure where overlapping glazed towers accommodate apartments, offices and a hotel. It is only the fourth high-rise that OMA has completed, even though the firm has developed designs for dozens over the years.
“This is on a site where nobody will be able to avoid seeing the entire building,” says Koolhaas, comparing the project with the Rothschild Bank Headquarters in London and CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, both of which are located within a dense cityscape. “It has a superb location on the river that can be only approached on one bridge, so we could really predict how it will be perceived,” he said.
OMA originally looked at designing two buildings on separate plots. The architect explains that he wanted to avoid “planting needles” so instead came up with a concept for a single structure with large vertical openings that break up the overall mass.
“We made a building that consists of separate volumes that were slightly shifted vis-a-vis each other so that it was very adaptable,” says Koolhaas. “We could easily replace one part with another part and therefore accommodate different logics and arguments.”
“This shifting creates a large building, but a large building that is a very dynamic presence in the city, because it is very different from any angle. It can be a wall, it can be almost three separate buildings, it can be a single mass,” he adds.
News: architect Rem Koolhaas’ studio OMA has completed its colossal “vertical city” in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (+ slideshow).
Photograph by Michel van de Kar
OMA designed the giant De Rotterdam complex for its home city, where the building sits on the south bank of the Maas river.
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
The 44-storey interconnected glass towers span a width of over a hundred metres and remain roughly the same floor area for the entirety of the building’s 150-metre height.
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
“We made a building that consists of separate volumes that were slightly shifted vis-a-vis each other so that it was very adaptable,” Rem Koolhaas told Dezeen during a tour of the building today.
“We could easily replace one part with another part and therefore accommodate different logics and arguments,” he added. “This shifting creates a large building, but a large building that is a very dynamic presence in the city.”
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
Overlapping blocks form the three towers that all share a plinth, in which lobbies and public spaces are located.
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
These blocks contain separate office spaces, residential apartments, hotel and conference facilities, restaurants and cafes. Workers and residents share the conference, sport and restaurant facilities.
Photograph by Charlie Koolhaas
The building is named after one of the ships that transported Dutch immigrants to America from 1873 to the 1970s.
OMA today marks the completion of De Rotterdam, a mixed-use, 160,000-metre-square slab-tower conceived as a “vertical city” on the river Maas.
Photograph by Philippe Ruault
Ellen van Loon: “Efficiency has been a central design parameter from day one. The extreme market forces at play throughout the course of the project, far from being a design constraint, have in fact reinforced our original concept. The result is a dense, vibrant building for the city.”
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
With the building’s completion, a critical mass has been established on the Kop van Zuid, realising the long-established vision of a second city centre south of the Maas. The building is named after one of the original ships on the Holland America Line, which from 1873 to the late 1970s transported thousands of emigrating Europeans bound for New York from the Wilhelmina Pier, next to which De Rotterdam is situated.
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
The three stacked and interconnecting towers of De Rotterdam rise 44 floors to a height of 150 meters and span a width of over 100 meters. Nevertheless, the building is exceptionally compact, with a mix of programs organised into distinct but overlapping blocks of commercial office space, residential apartments, hotel and conference facilities, restaurants and cafes.
Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode
Office employees, residents and hotel guests are brought together in conference, sport and restaurant facilities. The building’s shared plinth is the location of the lobbies to each of the towers, creating a pedestrianised public hub by means of a common hall.
Photograph by Michel van de Kar
Rem Koolhaas: “Despite its scale and apparent solidity, the building’s shifted blocks create a constantly changing appearance, different from every part of the city. The fact that it stands today represents a small triumph of persistence for the city, the developer, the contractor and the architects.”
The various phases of design and construction were supervised by partners-in-charge Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon and Reinier de Graaf, and associate-in-charge Kees van Casteren. De Rotterdam is developed by MAB Development and OVG Real Estate.
Perspective long section
Project: A mixed-use vertical city Status: Commission 1997, groundbreaking December 2009, completion November 2013 Clients: De Rotterdam CV, The Hague (Joint venture MAB, The Hague / OVG, Rotterdam) Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Site: Former harbour waterfront between KPN tower and Cruise Terminal at Kop van Zuid Program: Total 162,000m2: offices 72,000m2; 240 apartments 34,5000m2; hotel (278 rooms) / congress / restaurant 19,000m2; retail / F&B 1,000m2; leisure 4,500m2; parking (approx. 650 vehicles) 31,000m2
This office building in the Netherlands was designed for property developers called Orangerock, so architects Möhn + Bouman gave it a faceted orange facade made from sheets of Corten steel (+ slideshow).
Located in the town of Emmen, the building forms part of a site that Orangerock plans to develop in the next ten years. The client asked Dutch architects Möhn + Bouman to convert an abandoned house into a short-term office until then.
“The temporary character of the design allowed us to refrain from renovation and adapting,” said the architects. “Instead we designed a Corten steel screen that masks the old building.”
The new Corten steel facade wraps around the front and sides of the former house, completely hiding the original architecture behind an asymmetric volume with a large tinted-glass shopfront.
Strips of lighting sit within narrow recesses in the walls, intended by the architects to look like raindrops. Gutters are hidden behind the facade, while one section has been cut away to avoid colliding with a group of large rocks.
“The abstraction of the material and details emphasises the folded geometry,” added the architects.
The interior of the house was cleaned but most spaces were left intact, apart from a series of recent extensions that have been removed.
Here’s a project description from Möhn Bouman Architects:
Steel Screen, Emmen, Netherlands
The project is situated in a former rural town that grew over the last decades into a medium-sized regional city. As a result of this process large parts of the city are transforming gradually towards a more urban character. The client is an innovative project developer, keen to play an active role in this process. Recently they acquired a piece of land close to the city centre for future redevelopment. On the site some old buildings with a rural character can still be found. Once the redevelopment takes place, expected within ten years, these buildings will be demolished. Until that moment the developer decided to use one of them, an old house, as his office.
The challenge was to design an intervention to turn the house in a more representative office. The temporary character of the design allowed us to refrain from renovation and adapting. Instead we designed a Corten steel screen that masks the old building. Corten steel rapidly develops an equal layer of rust which protects it from further decay.
As a start the building was stripped of more recent extensions and cleaned. Precise measurements were then taken and translated into a 3D drawing, providing the basis for the design. The measurements included some large rocks that were found on the site, residues of the ice age, placed at a corner of the house.
Based on the resulting 3D files the steel of the screen was completely computer-cut, allowing a sophisticated detailing. In the roof small strips of blue light were introduced, like raindrops, and the name of the client was cut out of the steel. To blend with the rusted steel a special glass laminate was developed, combining coated glass and color layers. The abstraction of the material and details are emphasising the folded geometry, which in turn reacts on the shape of the house. To prevent staining the glass, rusty water from the roof is guided to a hidden gutter. The gutter ends above a massive rock, gradually turning into an Orange Rock over the years.
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