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Rem Koolhaas Professor in Practice Department of Architecture |
Projects 1978-1986
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Woningbouw Festival, Netherlands, The Hague, 1986
In the 1980's the City of The Hague decided to celebrate the fact the city had now 200.000 housing units with a festival. At Dedemsvaartweg in the south of the city a 1500 metres long The project had a difficult start because of protesting neighbours. Polluted soil and a crash of the housing market, in 2002 the project was completed. A total of 550 housing units spread over 50 projects have been realised in different types, such as patio houses, detached houses terraced housing, apartments, urban villas and penthouses.
To create a large diversity of architecture a different architect was chosen for each project. Dutch, International and architects from The Hague have been chosen by the different developers to participate in the festival. From the Netherlands among others Kees Christiaanse, Mecanoo, Frits van Dongen and OMA have all realised buildings. From abroad Arquitectonica, Steven Holl and Bernard Tschumi have completed projects. City Ambition Nederland Nu Als Ontwerp, Netherlands, 1986
This study is part of a large project, showing a distant future through the near future of its design stage. As the aimed year - 2050 - is distant, a serious answer therefore is ironic. Our proposal extrapolates an - in advanced applications - already present future. Agriculture without soil in the artificial climate of closed sheds on several stories, leaving arable land free for tulips and timber production. The airport is the first of a series of mayor peripheral developments, offices, hightech industries and - as polution and noise reduction become efficient - housing and recreation. The grid of the 17th century polders dominate the landscape, however the lakes will reappear in new shapes. Veerplein, Netherlands, Vlaardingen, 1986
The area around Veerplein in Vlaardingen holds a promise: a modern urban plan, similar to Lijnbaan in Rotterdam, is inserted inside the old town. While similar towns were unable to connect their old town with the postwar growth and demolition, It is here that the urban condition works. The old small shops are the perfect antagonism between the new large scale shopping centers. Our solution was to implement a connective layer in which both the small and large scale take part. Our design is a literal translation of this script. We implemented an 18x21m tartan grid with 10m and 12m wide strips. The resulting squares become urban interiors, the strips are buildings and sometimes this is inverted.
Tenerife Link Quay, Spain, Tenerife, 1986 Plaza de Espana is a silent knot: an almost unnoticeable, though troublesome, conflagration of human and vehicular traffics. A benign landscape – the interchange- is inserted to resolve these flows. The slopes of the double-helix move pedestrians, city traffic, port functions, public transportation, and parking unobstructed through the plaza de Espana. Bijlmermeer Redevelopment, Netherlands, Amsterdam, 1986
The project for the Bijlmermeer consists of a proposal for the renovation of the urban pattern of a grid, truly modern extension for social housing, south-east of Amsterdam. When we started the project it had become fashionable to have an apocalyptic view and even on the highest levels of decision making demolishing of important parts of the scheme was considered acceptable. We looked at it in a positive manner, appreciating the repetition of elements and its large scale. On the same time we considered this monotonous beauty the very basis of a problematic: on the scale of a provincial town urban living had been reduced to such completely innocent activities like fishing, walking and bathing. The Bijlmermeer is commonly associated with the central area of this part of Amsterdam, built on the lines of the Modern Movement: eleven story high slabs, above two layers of storage lockers, on regular intervals bent with angles of 120 degrees, a regular pattern, planted in a non differentiated landscape, divided by a two-level traffic system, both levels off the ground plane, along parking garages, forming a filter between dwelling and road, leaving the ground free. This, on first appearance all, is hiding underneath in a cave like atmosphere the nucleus of social, commercial and cultural life.
Focal point for criticism is the built-up part of the scheme, for reason of its omni visibility. At the same time it is the least changeable part. In our opinion the built-up part is not the only factor of importance for urban quality: it is the surface of the ground on which ambitions, qualities and impossibilities are (to be) laid out. To prove this quality we projected other (well known for their urban interest) fragments of urban fabric on the same scale over a characteristic part of the Bijlmermeer. Only one quadrant of slabs covered already an area as large as for instance the main part of the central city of Amsterdam, thus showing the capacity of the surface to suggest an interesting build structure.
Conclusion: the spectre of activities, procured by the actual Bijlmermeer, its urban quality, is too poor. It doesn’t match the potential of our culture of congestion and is anachronistic in view of modern urban pluralism. We believe the Bijlmermeer to be robust, even monumental, which is visible on a diagram showing only the existing build-up part. The smaller commercial centres need as much attention as the by now well functioning central shopping mall, next to a combined railway / metro station. The pedestrian routes along these secondary centres need to be torn away from underneath the traffic system. Thanks to its location in the centre of the con-urbanisation in the west of the Netherlands, well connected by rail and motorways to the infrastructure, the Bijlmermeer can become an independent urban entity. The Bijlmermeer should not be approached by means of historical models; the possibility of modern architecture is yet not exhausted: being unique Uithof, Netherlands, Utrecht, 1986
Uithof Masterplan aims to represent a long term perspective for ‘De Uithof’. The future possibilities for ‘De Uithof’ are based on the two main qualities of the area: the strength of the old underlying park meadow landscape and the remains of the orthogonal grid of the original planning by Van der Steur. The masterplan’s main goal is to create a self-evident overall structure for the campus, utilizing clear and simple means and using the qualities of the fragments that had already been put into place, allowing a seamless incorporation of the new program. Both qualities needed re-enforcement according to the principles of the new plan, which demanded that the underlying landscape should be kept intact and where necessary reconstructed and that the built areas were to adhere strictly to the orthogonal orientation. All buildings will be organized within the strict border of ‘clusters’. The masterplan is conceived around the central axis ‘Padualaan-Heidelberglaan’ a boulevard which will accommodate all public transport means for the area.
City Hall The Hague, Netherlands, 1986 With its 150.000 m² this building would have been one of the largest projects in recent European memory, by definition a radical break with the scale of the old city. The site has the form of a triangle, north and west façade align with the urban traffic system, to the south a pedestrian area. The building itself, in the form of a rectangle, is concentrated on the north edge, thus leaving a - sunken – triangular plaza that forms a cultural complex with the concert hall and the Netherlands Dance Theatre, and relates to the elevated plaza in front of the hotel.
Located on the ‘fault line’ between the historical city and the 70-ties redevelopment area, the building is a composition of three parallel slabs, with various silhouettes punched out to reduce the overall effect of the colossal mass and to respond to different contextual conditions. In the lower part, sections of the middle slab are left out to create voids that coincide with the library. A concourse along the north façade connects the public desks of city administration. The assembly hall hovers over the public entrance. The main entry to the library is projected on the sunken plaza. The construction uses supporting walls, allowing a modulated flexibility to the office floors, themselves a composition of three or less rectangles, always allowing daylight in the workspace. The north façade, towards the historical city, is clad with stone: the south façade has a stainless steel frame in a larger grid. The ‘inner’ facades to the north and south are covered with a glass curtain wall. The east and west facades have smaller windows in concrete panels. Casa Palestra, 'The Domestic Project', Italy, Milan, 1986
In the beginning of the 1980s modern architecture was always presented as lifeless, puritanical, empty and uninhabited. It has always been our intuition however, that modern architecture is in itself a hedonistic movement, that its severity, abstraction and rigor are in fact plots to create the most provocative settings for the experiment that is modern life. Our presentation was to illustrate this point by bending the Barcelona Pavilion and systematically develop a project of its all human occupancy related to physical culture in the widest possible sense of the word. The house will be both desecrated and inaugurated, and show its perfect appropriateness for even the most suggestive aspects of contemporary culture. Action suggested by projection and light-effects and an abstract soundtrack of the human voice – somewhere in the ambiguous zone between exercise and sexual pleasure – will complete this spectacle, whose aim is to shock people into an awareness of the possible ‘hidden’ dimensions of modern architecture.
The discovery of the Barcelona Pavilion The grand exposition closed. The crowds were gone. The King and Queen had signed the book. The pools were empty. Back home, Germany was in confusion. The pavilion was too heavy to move easily, unlike the other temporary pavilions, which looked much more like buildings. It was decided to leave the pavilion as a gift to the Spanish, until a decision could be made on what to do with it, and so it stood, a gothic outpost in the land of the Moors. The political situation became tense in Spain and issues other than architecture became more important. Bombs went off in the vicinity. In the turmoil, the presence of the pavilion that had always been so natural was overlooked completely.
At some point for a few days the pavilion became headquarters for the Republicans but they quarreled about the space, who would be inside, who would be covered, who would be in the open air. In the end, one of them made a plan so ridiculous, with such an absurd profusion of desks, cabinets, chairs, and waiting benches that the result was catastrophic. This experience made the Republicans the first to decide that modern architecture didn’t work. The pavilion was abandoned once again. In later fighting it was seriously damaged. For the first time, the world could see the pathetic sight of modern architecture, in ruins but no one had time to notice. The new regime was serious about resolving the issue of the pavilion once and for all. They had good relations with the new government in the pavilions homeland. They did not like the former Republican’s headquarters and decided to send it back to its home by train, as a friendly gesture.
The journey was complicated, even the railroad tracks of each country had a different width, necessitating many transfers and after a long delay the pavilion arrived back in Berlin. The pavilion was now an architectural orphan, its creator had just departed for the USA, and the new government was extremely different, now everyone was against modernism. They thought the pavilion was sick and they hardly opened the crates. Its modernity was a matter of context, only the marble was useful for their purposes if covered. First it became part of the décor for one of their propaganda movies. With the precious stone as a pompous background, a voluptuous blonde singer performed a sentimental aria that was directed to homesick soldiers scattered around the world, even further away than Barcelona. To soften the contours of the marble slabs and approve the acoustics, they were partly wrapped in purple satin. Later the stone was incorporated into the construction of a ministry where it ended up as the floor of the service entrance. The war became more intense. Berlin was bombed and the ministry was hit many times, the marble slabs cracked a few days before the city was liberated. The bombed ministry became an emergency hospital and an improvised camp. In the chaos of the liberation much space was needed and sometimes it became the site for crazy parties between all the liberators.
After the euphoria of liberation, the destroyed city, country, and Europe had to be rebuilt. Each particle, each fragment was to be re-used. The ministry was dismantled, the marble saved, and the other crates of the pavilion were finally unpacked. First, the new planners of the east side thought to reassemble the whole pavilion as a gas and service station anticipating the time when each worker would have a car, but the dimensions and hidden module of the structure prevented that – in fact – any use. A more convenient use was later found as the locker room for a new gigantic sports complex planned for the 1952 Olympic Games that were to cement the friendship between all Europeans, but the games became a victim of the cold war. Only the locker room was built, standing on the abandoned terrain used by random passers-by and soccer fanatics. It more or less became an informal club.
One day, a western scientist investigating the rebirth of classicism in the east recognized a fragment that seemed vaguely familiar; he entered the showers, which smelled as bad as the inside of the pyramids and found more. He became convinced that he had discovered the elements of the mythical structure. Negotiations were initiated by his party, and after ten years success. In the context of cultural exchange, the elements were exported in return for one medium sized computer and the secret design of a machine gun. Torenstraat, Netherlands, The Hague, 1985
Right here they are not conflicting with each other. By covering the area with an imaginary carpet we enforce its role as enclave which frees the way to an independent development. Our idea is to enforce the endive effect and to plan freely. This would result in a park in which different buildings are placed as objects. A modern version of the enclave at Westeinde in which the old Catholic church is located.
This commission is an excellent test case for common questions surrounding city renewal projects as it is defined by large contrasts in program and location. The location is at the edge of the centre and a city renewal neighborhood. The program demands a high concentration of city functions as well as a high concentration of neighborhood functions: 120 housing units and 500 parking spaces. The site collects a variety of different styles : the beautiful RIVA-garage, a block of housing that embraces the site. The in technical sense outdated Amicitia and a small city renewal neighborhood, the area is like an enclave in which these surrounding urban climates resonate. Right here they are not conflicting with each other. By covering the area with an imaginary carpet we enforce its role as enclave which frees the way to an independent development. Our idea is to enforce the endive effect and to plan freely. This would result in a park in which different buildings are placed as objects. A modern version of the enclave at Westeinde in which the old Catholic church is located. We have researched two options:
Option A with high density consists of two large buildings: a parking garage and an apartment block. The proposal to build a parking garage next to a parking garage is not strange: there are demands dealing with light, noise and view. By building a lean and tall parking garage opposite the RIVA-garage the site stays open for the park and the housing. Placing the housing unit adjacent to the garage allows for the opportunity to park the car and life on one level. The apartment block is a kind of 'Unite', a vertical village. The park on the ground level and the roof garden on top of the building form attractive public facilities. Option B is a study. of the possibility for a maximum of open space . Amicitia has disappeared and the parking is underground, under the park. The triangular square on the Torenstraat can be extended to a rectangular one. The showroom of the RIVA-garage will then come forward like a pavilion. The shops will be designed like a strip of transparent pavilions. Accessible from two sides. Various apartment blocks are distributed on the site. Their placements create specific conditions; large family houses are built in small building blocks, a tower will Accentuate/emphasize the square and a small entrance building at the Westeinde will be a modern contribution to this age-old street.
Morgan Bank, Netherlands, Amsterdam, 1985 The zoning envelope on the Morgan site and its configuration were conceived at the beginning of the century as part of an ensemble of residential blocks, but the intended symmetry of this complex has been gradually abandoned in the post-war period. Instead of trying to force the bank into this superceded form – the perimeter block, appropriate for housing but not necessarily for the functional needs of an office building – we propose a clear-cut distinction between bank and housing through a cut that divides the block in a separate volume for offices (along Apollolaan) and a section for housing (facing the residential Titiaanstraat).
The zone in between – which replaces the courtyard – becomes a garden. Instead of following the 45° angle that the site configuration suggests, we propose a ‘negative’ corner, a cut-out from the office block that defines an entrance plaza at the most prominent corner of the site. As this corner is also the site of the greatest permitted bulk, its two elevations are extended beyond the height of the main block to form an L-shaped ‘tower’ like an open book that directly addresses the two major axes that determine the site. In this way it forms the transition between the residential section of Apollolaan and the offices beyond, while contributing to the definition of a larger urban ‘room’ in front of the Hilton hotel.
De Bol, Netherlands, Rotterdam, 1985 With this study we proposed a new new maritime triangle in order to restore the connection between the city and the harbor. the Bol, an sphere that houses an information centre, theatre, restaurant and platform, would be the connector between the current scattered elements. In 1985 Rotterdam was not situated directly by the river. In the ‘Basisplan 1946’ (a masterplan for the center of Rotterdam made after the bombardment in World War II) plans were made to restore the contact between the city centre and the river. Because the Leuvehaven was filled with buildings this goal was never achieved. Furthermore in the last decades the harbor activities shifted more and more towards the sea. Only now and then a cargo ship passes the Noordereiland or a passengership lies, like a lost tourist, along the Wilhelminakade.
The maritime triangle A few fragmented plans were proposed which tried to restore the contact between the city and the harbor activities by artificial means. Examples are the bridge for ships in front of central station and the large fitness centre at the Maasboulevard. From these incidental proposals slowly rises a definitive and viable plan, which enables renewed and dynamic contact between the city and the river. OMA proposed a new maritime triangle, containing the maritime museum, war monument ‘De Boeg’,the Spido tours and the old harbor, including the restored shipyard. ‘De Bol’ would be the connector by creating a chain of activities and facilities, and would stand on top of the foundations of the old Willemsbrug.
Within this triangle the complete history, both current and future, of the harbor activities could be found: The Maritime Museum for education, the historical old harbor, and the strip of activities at the waterfront restores the visual connection towards the Maas and ‘De Bol’, Situation at the point where city and river meet, will be the commercial centre for the present and future. The interior of ‘De Bol’ In this study, ‘De Bol’ contains a commercial, semi-public information centre of combined harbor companies. Schematic ‘De Bol’ is divided into 3 layers: - The bottom contains the entry, an auditorium which can be converted into an area for congresses or movie theater for promotional movies. - The center layer - a disc, containing rings with a model of the whole harbor in the centre. This model contains moving parts to show the different activities that take place in the harbor. On the sides, harbor related businesses can present themselves on panels - The top layer - containing a large exhibition space dedicated to different aspects of the nature of being the world’s leading harbor, and a restaurant.
Bus Terminal, Netherlands, Rotterdam, 1985 Shelter for waiting passengers, ticket and information offices, access to subway. This commission was the result of winning an invited competition set up after proposals for an earlier commission were rejected. The scheme expanded slightly by OMA, is in fact a transport interchange. The bus station building sits on top of a metro exit, is in the center of a terminus for trams and faces Rotterdam’s central railway station on the far side of the tram lines. It is flanked by parking bays for buses and has a large lay out-strechted canopy that reaches towards the railway station and over a punctuated screen used for advertising.
It is made from re-used 1950’s bus shelters collected from around Rotterdam. The canopy is intended to be saying “Hey, hello” over the screen to tram and rail passengers. Inside the building is a ticket hall that encloses the metro exit. This faces a curved ticket information desk – behind this are administration offices, a refreshments room and changing facilities for the bus company staff.
As shown above, the original design was to have a steel ball symetrically supporting the canopy, sitting on the glass ticket hall “pavillion”. This proved in the end too awkward for the construction of the canopy, but the actual shape of the canopy has remained exactly as originally proposed. It is a section cut from the surface of a sphere 100 meters in diameter. In an acid test for what could be thought an extravagant form, it was checked by a structural engineer and found to be, within a few centimeters, the optimum shape for its use. After the thickness of the cross section was checked, and the shape plotted by computer the elegance of the originally conceived shape remained unchanged. Form and function of the purest kind. Parc Citroen Cevennes, France, Paris, 1985
Two primary ambitions have inspired the design of this park:
Around the central “metropolitan” meadow a perimeter zone is conceived as a “forest” out of which different rooms are scooped, each with its own character in direct connection with the neighbouring architecture. Lintas, Netherlands, Amsterdam, 1984
Late July 1984 OMA was asked by SCC & B Lintas, one of the world’s top advertising agencies, to realize their new Dutch headquarters in the top of the – just built – World Trade Center in Amsterdam. This was merely an interior design commission: for Lintas it was a strategic maneuver to take possession of the 3 top floors in the tallest tower of the WTC complex. As the WTC is a ‘normal’ office tower, designed for standard units, OMA was asked to reconsider the top of the building in order to create a distinguished ‘home’ for Lintas. We conceived the idea of a penthouse for Lintas: -the Attic for the creative department (the ‘art academy’) on the 17th floor -the Bel Etage for the reception, client-service and staff on the 16th floor -the Souterrain for the financial department, library etc. on the 15th floor connected by a great internal staircase. Per floor the design is characterized by a system of linear zoning. This results from the need to mix disciplines into rooms, alternated by larger spaces. For Lintas this means an escape from the principle of rooms along a corridor – which suits a WTC, but is deadly for a big tenant.
By making a massive wall every storey is divided into 2 zones: ‘in front of the wall’ and ‘behind the wall’. The core of the building ‘disappears’. The area ‘behind the wall’ is compartmented into rooms, the area ‘in front of the wall’ stays open and is divided into glass studios. When one steps out of the elevator, the effect is of leaving the WTC and entering Lintas. This layout mirrors itself in the view on the city: the open zone is oriented south and has a panoramic view over the New Lake and the Airport, the closed rooms look down onto the old city-center. The reception area, the staircase and the glass ‘media-strip’ form, together with the presentation rooms, one ‘big communicator’. This media-strip consists of a series of specially designed video-towers, and other display devices, that are installed behind a plane of identical glass doors and backed up by a black curtain: a continuous changing show-window for Lintas’ productions.
In the studio zone, a set of specially designed basic elements form the design by means of their interrelated juxtaposition. The design is flexible by definition: an endless variation of elements can be generated, without losing coherence. Some elements: -glass separation walls, that have a dot-matrix coating to manipulate transparency -marble blocks, that contains pantries, archives, wardrobes-file-cabinets placed in certain rhythms -a windowsill system with a clip-on desks and cable systems, specially designed for Lintas. The floor of the representative and staff zone is elevated 30 cm’s, accessible by steps from a wide gallery, that contains low, ‘smoke filled’ conference rooms where one can enjoy the view from the low position of a club-fauteuil. Churchillplein, Netherlands, Rotterdam, 1984 The Churchillplein is one of the main intersections of Rotterdam. It defines the border between the city and the harbour. The proposed site for the competition is an exception of the grid of the city centre, which demands that every new building follows the orientation of this centre, or of the block itself. To the north of the site an old mansion with its garden is being reconstructed.
To the west a little example of Dudok adjoins the Coolsingel. Given the problem to watch the pyramidal zoning-envelope, together with the problem of the orientation of the site, OMA could only base its project on the manipulation of the envelope with the purpose to make the most economic project with the simplest intervention. The program demanded a recognisable building containing 18.000 m2 of flexible office space with, on the ground floor, public facilities. The pyramidal envelope implicated that the biggest usable space was to be found in the lower part of the building, which was not the best solution. To free the space from the ground we took away a piece of every side of the envelope and pivoted half of the remaining volume 180º, thus obtaining a tower where every story was the same surface, regaining spaces in the upper levels. On the ground floor this transformation let us place the entrance lobby in the most transparent area, where it thus could guarantee the control of the coming and going. With its two façades that incline, one towards the city the other towards the harbour, the tower presents interesting and changing silhouettes from every point in town. When one is close to the building, the tilting glass façades reflect the sky towards the city and the museum ship “Buffalo” towards the harbour. The ambiguous quality of this doubled building resolves the problem of orientation of its site: it does not define a site but reflects the ambiance of its atmosphere. De Brink Apartments, Netherlands, Groningen, 1983
Groningen is the capital of the north Holland province of the same name and is the fifth largest city in Holland. The council, through the 1970’s has given social emphasis to its building and planning. The result of this is that there is a uniform sub-urban texture to the neo-village vernacular housing and that the centre is restricted to pedestrians, bicycles, and public transport to the virtual exclusion of private and commercial vehicles. When the Brink site at the junction of four canals and facing west to the city centre, was considered for redevelopment, a minority view of the council was that because of its position outside the centre on the 19th century periphery accessed off an orbital road, that it should be developed at a greater density with the possibility of building higher than the usual three stories.
In June 1983, OMA was asked to make a project for a local developer / builder. The developers brief asked for a minimum of 72 three room flats for sale to first time buyers and retired people. The accommodation should be in more than one building to facilitate phasing and financing and there should be three apartments per floor. Each apartment should have 54 m2 net living area, have a balcony facing south and have a view of the historic centre. There should be nearly 1:1 parking. The OMA project comprised three nine storey ‘towers’ facing the historic centre. The buildings were lifted off ground on piloti to release the surface for parking and garden. The first floor contains storage space for the flats and thus the first level of apartments was five meters above ground. The large area required for parking was separated from the public garden which extended around the edge of the site along the canal, by 1.80 meter high masonry wall of glazed block. This wall is interrupted by the glass lobbies of the three blocks. Besides post boxes and access to stairs and elevators, the lobbies contain a small waiting area looking out to the garden.
At the scale of the city, the three towers refer to a series of free standing villas and mansion blocks that are located along the canal between the south and north harbours. The location of these three buildings on the Brink marks the main intersection of canals at the edge of the centre and the ‘bow’ of one of the 19th century industrial suburbs thus forming an orientation point from the town. Four different elevations follow from the structural organisation of the buildings which comprises two closed elevations (north and east) and two open elevations (south and west). The closed elevations are faced in white brick with scattered coloured glazed bricks, while the open elevations are metal and glass.
The top and bottom of each block, which is otherwise identical, are modified according to their position on the site and relative to the wall separating the garden from the car park. On the ground floor, the glass walls of the lobbies are different, while on the roof it is possible to build a penthouse. The roofscape of the three buildings is seen as reflecting the varied roofscape of the surrounding buildings. In July 1984, we were asked to develop an alternative project comprising 80 apartments, this time a net living area of 43 m2, the accommodation to be organised in two buildings. The main advantages of this configuration were: 1) The four smaller apartments per floor took up the same area as the earlier scheme with no increase in the size of the internal lobby; 2) Improved aspect, each flat looks out in two or three directions with no direct overlooking; 3) The two block scheme gives a greater transparency in the city horizon; 4) With less than 1:1 parking, a larger area of ground can be given over to public gardens; 5) The two block scheme involves obvious savings in requiring fewer elevators, less elevational area per apartment etc.
By changing the long axis of the blocks from east-west to roughly north-south the buildings look ‘past’ each other rather than overlooking each other. The greater mass of the two blocks due to the increase in height is broken by splitting the building into two thin slabs. The front slab is ten stories of apartments raised above the ground on pilotis, and placed symmetrically against a larger slab of ten stories of apartments on two stories of storage together with the entrance lobby. The top floor of the rear slab opens onto the roof of the front slab, which can be a communal sun terrace or a penthouse garden terrace. Police Station, Netherlands, Almere, 1982
This was the first true building finished by OMA on their own, although a very late contester for the race. OMA had been studying designs for the police authorities of Almere, the last new town in Holland not far from Amsterdam, when the temporary police station of Almere-Haven, one of the multi-centers of Almere, burnt down accidentally. This created an urgent need and so programs were pushed forward and the new police station was built in the last six months of 1985. Although representative of OMA’s work and functions well, it is generally felt within the office that until the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague is finished, it would be better to subdue the double page color spreads and keep the champagne bottles is reserve a little longer. It is not blessed with a beautiful site. It is a single storey building with a central first-floor tower, standing in a somewhat confined space between a bus-only highway, a car park and four to five storey flats just 15 to 20 meters away. It was intended to have a strong form with a warm friendly quality which, with its light blue towers, dark blue glazed brick front façade and pink terrazzo porch, it achieves, but it is hard to find an angle to appreciate its form.
It performs much better on the inside. The policing system of Almere-Haven is a prototype intended to maximize public and police interaction. The police force of 40 is split into two work teams of 20, which work the eastern and western parts of the town independently. Within each work team everybody shares common duties and specializing only as a secondary task. The intention is to give all the police direct day-to-day contact with the public in order to build up confidence between each other. The work team rooms are used by the public, unless requiring confidentiality and look onto a common internal courtyard that has its own Japanese style rock garden. The back of the courtyard is also glazed, making visible the back corridor which serves internal police movements and the staircase to the first floor police refreshment and relaxation rooms. If the Rotterdam bus station passes the test of maintaining the elegance of its canopy from conception to construction, Almere-Haven Police Station maintains its systematic approach of solving the requirements for its prototype police force. The building can only be used as it was intended. Parc de la Villette, France, Paris, 1982
The program by the city of Paris was too large for the site, leaving no space for a park. The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method that - combining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park. The idea comprises 5 steps:
In the second phase, the nature element was elaborated in the form of a series of "wings”, that created - as in a theater - the illusion of a park without consuming the territory that was needed for the overabundance of activities. Elegy for the Vacant Lot The permanence of even the most frivolous item of architecture and the instability of the metropolis are incompatible. In this conflict the metropolis is, by definition, the victor; in its pervasive architecture is reduced to the status of plaything, tolerated as décor for the illusions of history and memory. In Manhattan this paradox is resolved in a brilliant way: through the development of a mutant architecture that combines the aura of monumentality with the performance of instability. Its interiors accommodate compositions of program and activity that change constantly and independently of each other without affecting what is called, with accidental profundity, the envelope.
The genius of Manhattan is the simplicity of this divorce between appearance and performance: it keeps the illusion of architecture intact, while surrendering wholeheartedly to the needs of the metropolis. This architecture relates to the forces of the Groszstadt like a surfer to the waves. In the seventies, architects wallowed, on the contrary, in fantasies of control. Looking back at history they rediscovered not only old forms, a new erudition arrested at the first page of the history book - the door, the column, the architrave, the keystone – but also the symptoms of a former power and status – the endless axes, the impressive symmetries, the vast compositions. Were they not the work of architects? Inflated by nostalgic dreams of omnipotence, its consciousness as much enriched as eroded by an exclusive concentration on form, the profession faced the end of the 20th century in a confident mood. Ambiguous illustrations of this fact were a series of great competitions (mass graves without tombstones: never has a single profession been so shamelessly drained of energy and money as architecture in the past 15 years), each the potential beginning of a triumphal march towards a new kind of city, a new urbanity.
In the first La Villette competition (1976), the architects were free to propose a whole new quartier – a fragment of the new, more humane city of the future. Offered the opportunity to imagine an ideal episode of late 20th century life, hurtling en plein vitesse towards the third millennium, they proposed, finally, an environment fit for glass blowers and horseshoers driving prewar Citroëns. Later – half emboldened by what? – this call to arms for the reconstruction of the European city became even more arrogant and dogmatic in militancy of its declarations. Shame to all those who signed the declaration of Palermo! Meanwhile, OMA’s imagination – rigorously out of sync – was consumed by twin preoccupations: program (simple interest in what happens), which seemed the unrealized project of a marginal band of modern architecture; and the phenomena of Manhattan, which seemed, in many ways, its casual materialization. A combination could define a plausible relationship of architecture, modernity, and the metropolis (their home base).
The second La Villette competition (1982) seemed to offer the ingredients for a complete investigation of the potential for a European Culture of Congestion. Here was the par excellence metropolitan condition of Europe: a terrain vague between the historical city – itself raped by the greedy needs of the 20th century – and the plankton of the banlieue; on it, two pieces of history marooned like spaceships. It was one of those nothingnesses of still infinite potential that in this case could be preserved since its program could not be expressed in form, a program that insisted on its own stability. If the essence of Delirious New York was the section of the Downtown Athletic Club – a turbulent stacking of metropolitan life in ever-changing configurations; a machine that offered redemption through a surfeit of hedonism; a conventional, even boring, skyscraper; a program as daring as ever imagined in this century – La Villette could be more radical by suppressing the three-dimensional aspect almost completely and proposing pure program instead, unfettered by any containment. In this analogy, the bands across the site were like the floors of the tower, each program different and autonomous, but modified and “polluted” through the proximity of all others. Their existence was as unstable as any regime would want to make them. The only “stability” was offered by the natural elements – the rows of trees and the round forest – whose instability was ensured simply through growth. What La Villette finally suggested was the pure exploitation of the metropolitan condition: density without architecture, a culture of “invisible” congestion. Checkpoint Charlie, Germany, Berlin, 1980
The commission follows from two previous projects in the IBA competitions of 1981. The program includes 26 apartments in three layers:
The site is in the baroque Friedrichstadt, now dominated by the architectural remains of the pre- and postwar period, the Berlin wall and the Checkpoint (Berlin/Berlin border crossing for non-residents). The project uses these latent qualities of the site in a contemporary way. The building is a series of pavilions for border control activities forming a podium, with a ‘Miethaus’ on top. It respects the urban plan, is lifted off the ground, separating the housing from the Checkpoint and leaving the street level to activities related to the border control, that penetrate to the back of the site. The program for housing is superposed: below maisonnette / terrace houses, with yards to the back, topping the podium; the next three levels are flats, accessible through a ‘street in the air’ at the front; on the upper level a deck giving access to the flats within the penthouse. Lutlowstrasse Housing, Germany, Berlin, 1980
For this development, IBA has projected public assisted housing for a narrow triangular site in the South Tiergarten quarter, which was bounded on the south by Lützowstrasse, one of Berlin’s traditional but war damaged streets, to the north by Lützowufer, a tree-lined thoroughfare bordering the idyllic Landwehr canal, beyond which views to the park could be obtained; to the east it bordered on a 19th century pumping station, and to the west is converged towards a small triangular park, facing Lützowplatz (as present a messy traffic intersection). The site’s most challenging problem was that it contained in the middle, five rows of 3½ storey private dwellings (euphemistically called Stadthäuser: ‘townhouses’) running at right angles to Lützowstrasse itself (along their own private ‘streets’ and ‘gardens’), which had yet to be built, and the detailed design of which was not disclosed. Apart from leaving a very narrow site, they existed without a context, as the periphery bounded by the existing streets had been reserved for the competition. It remained therefore the task of the competitors to provide the ‘townhouses’ with a context that would mediate between them and the street, as well as establish the new project’s own integrity and relation to the vicinity.
As the underlying wishes of IBA are based on the concept of the restoration of the city, the program was so presented as to imply that the interpretation of this aim should mean the restoration of the original perimeter block. To achieve this, one had to either provide unrealistically thin development, or build to half the height of the existing street scale, or design for twice the maximum permissible density and plot ratio. Furthermore, it required a certain shortsightedness towards a Berlin reality: not only is it a city with decreasing population, but it has, since the devastation of the war, evolved a vernacular which in part has consisted of constructing within the now transformed (both in fact and in meaning) interior of the block, as exemplified in this site by the ‘townhouses’, and a new pumping station by O.M. Ungers, now under construction. While on the one hand this reality seemed to make the retrospective superimposition of the perimeter block a conceptual overload, and in practical terms absurdly inefficient (as illustrated in a proposal by Stirling for Meineckestrasse), it did on the other hand intimate the evolution of a yet unofficial urban typology, still crude and often unsightly, but nevertheless suggestive of a more appropriate strategy towards the broader and more critical conditions of our shrinking cities, than any of the official theories on urbanism could provide. And, considering the paradox of a critically expanding need for cheap housing, we felt that a perimeter block which would shield the ‘townhouses’ would become a cynical gesture: to propose cheap housing for increasing the quality more expensive accommodation, which would itself be completely severed from any earlier experience.
Instead, we developed a tactic whereby 8-storey slabs were placed at the entry of each of the private streets, angled in such a way that they face, and thereby protect the gardens of the ‘townhouses’ while opening up the access and aspect of their private ‘streets’ from Lützowstrasse. The main principles of our concept were:
After establishing the 8-storey angled slab as the basic type, it was then modified, to respond to the contextual conditions as follows:A 4-storey row of dwellings with front and back gardens continues the line of the ‘townhouses’ and intersects the slab, terminating on the Lützowstrasse building line to punctuate the existing street front, so that seen from the street’s oblique perspective, it collapses into a wall. Part of the West slab is curved towards the small triangular park to provide a combined new frontage addressing the high-rise developments across Lützow Platz. At the same time, it bridges over the first private access street to the ‘townhouses’ to stand directly inside the small park and provide a gate to both housing developments. Part of the East block is tilted to terminate the site layout and link its architecture to the pumping station, to provide a gate to projected senior citizen housing, and to define the proposed location of a kindergarten site which becomes a pocket park and allows the principle of transparency to make new and old buildings in the interior of the block to relate to the street. Kochstrasse / Friedrichstrasse Housing, Germany, Berlin, 1980 The project is located at the eastern end of Block 4, in the center of the former Friedrichstadt. An area formed by a baroque plan but more recently characterized by architectural remains of both the pre- and post-war period as well as the wall and Checkpoint Charlie.
In the debate on the reconstruction of the European City and Berlin in particular the attitude of OMA was to establish a retroactive concept based on inherent but latent principles of the urban context. Rather than mere restoration or reinterpretation of the 18th century block, the project set out to the contradictory characteristics of the site in order to invest in the project as a definition of Contemporaneity. The OMA project combines a functional brief with the iconographic condition of the Checkpoint area into an ensemble that contrasts the memory of Friedrichstrasse as painted by Kirchner with the reality of the Wall and the need to reconcile a reconstitution of the traditional idea of the street with the contemporary conditions in the Checkpoint area. The starting point for the project was to separate domestic from Checkpoint facilities by establishing the former on “elevated ground” suspended above the activities of the street i.e. border control which penetrates to the back of the site. These activities are contained in a series of pavilions on the tarmac, which serves as a bus concourse. The podium becomes the plot onto which a “Mieshaus” is erected, the artificial surface on which Berliner residential life takes place including allotments and “Balkonien”. The housing comprises three layers of accommodation each different in size and type, superimposed on top of each other: a row of maisonette terrace houses with front yards is directly accessible from the podium. The street in the air provides collective access to the three stories above. Finally a deck gives access to flats within the penthouse. From Friedrichstrasse the semi-permanent pavilions which shelter under the podium of the complex hint at the border character of the building. One day when the pavilions are no longer needed and the ground floor has been converted into a supermarket, the cantilever of the roof projecting over Friedrichstrasse will remain as a memory of the insertion of the Wall. At the moment this hovering plane marks the division line between East and West, one of the Worlds most dramatic transitions within an urban environment.
Panopticon Prison, Netherlands, Arnhem, 1980 In 1979 we were asked to “study” the possible renovation of a Panopticon prison – one of the three ever built on the principle in its pure form: a circle of cells with the all-seeing “eye” of the observatory as its centre. The 100 years old building had to be equipped “for at least another 50 years” and “to embody present day insights into the treatment of prisoners…”. In the 50s, when the current ideology discovered the “pavilion” model of prisons whereby, supposedly for psychological reasons, the inmates were subdivided in small groups, the building had been condemned and its demolition planned. Now, for the variety of reasons – its uniqueness as a purely theoretical building, its undeniable architectural quality, the convenience that it existed, reinforced by the fact that the prison was surprisingly popular with its inmates, who like the spaciousness of its vast interior – it was decided that perhaps it should continue to exist.
The prison is a cylinder, 180 feet in diameter, composed of 4 layers of 50 cells, topped by a dome that is 150 feet at its highest point. Built in 1880 for solitary confinement, with an observation tower in the centre, “present day insights” had already spontaneously changed – in fact, drastically reversed – performance of the building. Outside, on the walled prison grounds, a series of sheds had proliferated, randomly fulfilling spatial needs for additional activities and making the grounds cluttered and difficult to guard. Inside, in the dome, the former centre of power had been converted into a canteen for the guards: the former observers were now themselves observed by the prisoners, who were no longer kept locked in their cells at all times, but could circulate freely on the rings and had access to the ground floor that was, at times, as the Milan galleria. Now, that they had abandoned the centre of power, control was exercised through the simple being there of guards – circulating with the prisoners through the transparent space where no action or inaction remained unnoticed. This spontaneous adaptation had to be completed through an intentional project of revision that would offer a series of new facilities for work, visits, entertainment, sport, schooling and shopping that together would add a communal, almost public dimension to the life of the prison. A second demand was to provide “living rooms” where the total mass of the prisoners – 200 at the most – could be together in smaller groups to form there ersatz families that “present day insights” claimed, would restore their impaired social abilities. In this project, the first obligation of the new architecture was to avoid entrapment by the existing structure / prison, while at the same time, having no choice but to accept the containment of the existing prison yard. To perform this “dissociation” two streets run from the centre of the dome to the extremes of the terrain. They form an exit from the dome; their intersection obliterates for ever the Panopticon “eye”. All new facilities are “built” along these streets as autonomous elements – some inside, but most outside.
The same relative freedom that now exists in the dome is extended across the two streets. In this way, essential contrasts that define life outside – such as indoors / outdoors, home / work, house / street – are re-established inside the prison. The facilities for the formation of smaller living groups – in themselves a desirable complement to the original dome that has no intermediary scale between the individual cell and the dome itself, i.e. the mass of prisoners and guards, - are placed in two wedge-shaped elements that break, from the exterior through the outer wall, leaving the dome’s interior untouched: the living rooms that are oriented toward the landscape beyond the walls (the prison lies along the Rhine). Through connections inside the dome – four spiral staircases connect all the rings – different groups recruited from the total prison population can be formed easily at different times of the day, on the basis of randomness, shared interests, nationality, freedom of association. Finally, four cells were already removed from each ring before our arrival; since it was inconceivable to restore cells, this gap was projected outward from the centre, creating a second larger circle around the existing one, which is used for the prison offices. For us the prison embodies, in a way, 100 years of wisdom, or at least experience; the scheme projects a layer of modernity on this experience without making claims of being definitive. The new is neither more nor less safe than the old. The isonographic deterrence of the old is left intact, saving the new the embarrassment of having to either ignore or express the idea of incarceration, which is incompatible with its aspirations. After the intervention, the dome represents the dismantled past, its former centre crossed out, resting on a podium of modernity, which is concerned only with improving the prisoners’ conditions.
What was most rewarding about the project was the extent to which programmatic, metaphoric and formal intentions could be made to coincide. Within strict programmatic demands – the metaphor of a new beginning – culture as a system of paradigms continuously revised, the crossing out of the centre, all worked both on the most utilitarian and the most conceptual level, and established a bonding between them. What was surprising finally, was the almost eager way in which an “architectural” solution was embraced by the authorities as resolving the dilemma of either disciplines. The discredited claim for architecture as being able to directly intervene in the formation of culture – and to achieve through its crystallisation, the resolution of hopelessly contradictory demands – freedom and discipline – was for once vindicated on the edge of dystopia. As such, the scheme was produced as part of an enterprise to recoup the programmatic initiative that, for us, has seemed the true ambition of modern architecture – an architecture that can support and provoke modern conditions. Boompjes, Netherlands, Rotterdam, 1980
At the end of 1980 OMA was asked by the Rotterdam City Counsel to make a study of high rise building in the city, and to illustrate the investigations with a planning proposal for a site in the centre. In consultation with the Town planning Department a site was selected on the Maasboulevard along near the Maasbridges.
The site The shifting of the centre through the gigantic injection of buildings in the second reconstruction makes this point most suitable to take over the role of the “window” in the disclosing of the riverfront. The site is peculiar: on one hand it is embedded in a network of traffic lanes, like the new suspension bridge across the Maas whose approach makes its way into the city through two inexplicable twists. On the other hand there lies a unique opportunity to connect the river with the city. The city is visible, but hardly accessible; any structure on it will be noted in passing, at bewilderingly different speeds and angles.
The design in its context The building and the bridge are designed as an undetachable whole. Built as a composition of towers inserted in a slab, the project carries on the experiments in slaboid mutations and new building types that were done in the bombed area after the war. It forms a transparent screen along the riverfront.On the riverside the screen acts as a row of stone towers against a glass horizon, introducing a skyline in the Rotterdam skyline, and on the city side it acts as a stone slab with glass towers and slits, that portray pieces of the river. Due to their different angles, the glass surfaces on the city side reflect the light in different directions and mostly they only reflect air and water, not buildings. The building is designed toward the kinetic experience, caused by the passing of the site with different speeds across the bridges and the boulevard: The towers all have a different angle to the slab: some fall backwards, others are contained, others twist away and the steel tower has altogether escaped. The average height of the building in 72 meters. For a tower this is not so high, for a slab it is (according to Dutch standards). The composition of these elements in this project claims a fair height to be effective in the skyline of the Rotterdam harbour, where the juxtaposition of extremely high constructions with lower city districts is a frequently appearing image.
Two Structures for Rotterdam 1980-81 The centre of Rotterdam was bombed in 1940: overnight it was turned into a 3 km wide crater. Few buildings survived – one of them (the so-called White House), a 54 meter tower built in 1898 that was for twenty years Europe’s tallest building. Immediately, Rotterdam architects started to plan the eventual ‘reconstruction’ project, which began during the war, which is still incomplete. During the 50s the new Rotterdam became a paradigm: a CIAM city of slabs that were tied together by a Team X-like ‘connective tissue’ by Bakema, the Lijnbaan. In the 60s and 70s, that emblematic architecture was discredited: on the periphery of the centre, on the other side of the railway track, a second, revisionist reconstruction was started – an assembly of buildings by Piet Blom (a small forest of his tree houses), Bakema and others. The new reconstruction was the absolute opposite of the 50s effort: where they were sober, ordered and logical; the new city was chaotic and obsessively humanist. The two cities are separated by a ‘fault’, formed by a railway line and a highway that both cross the river at this point. The separation is further reinforced by a new suspension bridge across the Maas whose approach makes its way into the city through two inexplicable twists. Now that the city nears completion, the riverfront – more precisely, the so-called Maasboulevard, a curved dike that protects the rest of the city – remains under-exploited and is one of the last frontiers for further development. The two structures for Rotterdam are located exactly at this point; they form a ‘cornerstone’ of the old ‘modern’ centre, and face, across the fault, the multitude of anti-modernist revisions. This project had a triple purpose: to activate the riverfront; to propose a ‘solution’ for the bridgehead of the old bridge that will become redundant after the inauguration of the new one; and to suggest an apartment building for a site against the old bridge. The site is peculiar: one side is quayside, the other is formed by a riverside highway, one the side of a bridge. It is visible, but hardly accessible; any structure on it will be noted in passing, at bewilderingly different speeds and angles.
Irish Prime Minister Residence, Ireland, Dublin, 1979 The Taoiseach’s Residence and the State Guest House are subjected to opposite demands: Through the nature of its occupancy, the State Guest House has to be understood and memorized almost at first sight by its temporary inhabitants; it should not bore them at second sight with an over-diagrammatic clarity. The resolution of these divergent demands was suggested by taking an east-west section through the site, a trajectory that goes from the curvilinear to the rectilinear, from the agitated to the serene, from the (relatively) exposed to the shielded. The two houses are an architectural extrapolation and interpretation of these themes: they echo and amplify the existing gradation of the land.
THE TAOISEACH’S RESIDENCE The Taoiseach’s Residence is a composition of two intersecting curves: the first contains the private domain of the Taoiseach and his family, the second the Reception rooms and the utilities needed for their operation. The house itself is directed southeastward toward the open vista. It has its own primary driveway and entrance for the everyday use of the family. On the ground floor the north ‘wing’ contains the living quarters; a low retaining wall demarcates a private family garden to the north. The southern ‘wing’ of the private curve accommodates the Taoiseach’s offices. (A study has been projected on the library mezzanine to give complete privacy when wanted.) On the top floor, the music/hobby room is conceived as a second, informal living room, giving access to the grass-covered terrace.
The second, ‘official’, curve has its own approach and entrance from the court between the two houses. It is a single space, loosely articulated into functional zones by architectural elements and differences in floor level. Away from the private house, the sunken part of the Salon extends to the south as an open-air terrace. The Dining Room is a platform, suspended partly over the formal driveway, partly over the Salon, yielding complex interior and exterior views. It is reached via a cascade of staircases and a bridge that establish a festive circuit, a “perpetual movement” of guests. North of the private driveway, where it becomes a covered carport, are the utilitarian parts of the houses and the self-contained flat. STATE GUEST HOUSE If all the walls of the present kitchen garden would be taken down, the surrounding nature would still imply its ‘phantom’ presence. Based on that observation, the State Guest House is a band of residential accommodation that conforms exactly to the perimeter of the walled garden. The original wall facing the Taoiseach’s Residence is preserved, backed by a second, concrete wall of the Guest House.
The State Guest House is conceived as a sequence of autonomous pavilions – the bedroom suites – along an ambulatory. Each pavilion has its own front door, entrance lobby, etc. The regularity of this scheme is interrupted by the communal elements of entrance, salon, library, dining room and a small exercise room. These major public spaces are so designed that they invade and appropriate adjacent segments of the corridor. Their uniqueness is stressed through the use of a typical materials, i.e. the riveted aluminum of the roof of the salon. On the outside too, the public rooms form major incidents among the otherwise regular arrangement of the bedroom suites. To incorporate the memory of the site, the stone facing of the original wall is rebuilt along the west side of the ambulatory. South and west wings of the Guest House form a continuous residential complex; the north wing accommodates offices and kitchen. The east wing combines staff, storage and security facilities.
GARDENS In view of the high quality of the existing park, it appears desirable to change as little as possible, which is, in any case, the intention of the architecture. The area around the Taoiseach’s Residence will be left intact. Since the surrounding nature defines the courtyard of the State Guest House, the garden inside should not compete with the park. Bisected by the driveway, its eastern half is planted with colored bands of irregular width – bushes, cultivated and wild flowers – that will present a continuously shifting aspect to the guests moving up and down the circulation spaces inside. Hedges finally form a buffer between the house and parked cars, extend the three zones of the library, form the base of the radio mast and insure the privacy to the inward looking east wing. Dutch Parliament Extension, Netherlands, The Hague, 1978
Since its foundation in the 13th century, the whole Binnenhof complex has undergone a continuous process of both architectural and programmatic transformation, in which its defensive purposes were replaced by representative and symbolic functions. Over the centuries it has acted as royal palace, archives, republican headquarters, royal palace again, until it was completely ‘conquered’ in the 19th century by various ministries and the entire apparatus of the parliament. To accommodate these changes in function, all architectures since the Middle Ages made significant and tangible contributions to the complex as a whole with incremental replacement of the walls of the fortress, whereby the walls have become an agglomeration of different historical styles. Superimposed on these authentic changes is a layer of ‘restorations’ intended to preserve the complex’s historicity, but which proves only that each act of preservation embodies a revision, a distortion, even a redesign. The largest single block of fabricated history is now the Ridderzaal, whose Gothic authenticity has been replaced by a 19th century restorative fantasy à la Viollet-le-Duc. There is very little medieval architecture left; the Binnenhof complex has become a catalogue of medievalnesses.
In 1978 a competition was held to correct this ambiguity. A vaguely triangular area east of the Binnenhof was designated as the site for a much-needed extension of the parliamentary accommodation. This extension also had to provide a restoration of symbolism, performing a conceptual separation between government and the representatives who are supposed to supervise its actions.
PROPOSAL According to this reading, the ‘conquest’ of the Binnenhof becomes final with the introduction of the new parliament itself: it is designed as the architectural representation of the final push which creates a breach of modernity in the walls of the Fortress itself.
The total program of the competition – for all the parliamentary facilities – was to be divided between a number of existing structures which had to be preserved on the one hand, and the new building(s) which had to represent the autonomy of the parliament on the other. In OMA’s scheme, the tradition where each age manifests itself inside the walls of the Binnenhof is maintained through the transplantation of one 17th century structure to a position in front of the complex, where it partly undoes Berlage’s traffic cut and restores some of the original definition of the Buitenhof. The breach created by this removal is then occupied by two slabs: one horizontal, the other vertical. The horizontal slab – a podium made of glass brick – contains the entire conference centre. It is conceived as a covered podium for political activity, directly accessible to the general public from the adjoining plaza. The vertical slab contains accommodations for professional politicians. An ambulatory runs horizontally through the assembly, towards the ‘smoke-filled room’. Above the ambulatory are three floors where the 13 political parties prepare their positions; from there they then filter down to the ambulatory and the assembly. Below the ambulatory are three floors for the managers of the parliamentary procedures. The 340 rooms for the members of parliament and their assistants are accommodated in the existing structures along the Binnenhof; three of the five courtyards have been connected to form an arcade which canalised all traffic towards a split ramp, which in turn leads directly to the ambulatory and to the basement of the conference hall.
In a project where a large number of programmatic elements is distributed over both new and existing structures and scattered over a vast site, the quality of the connections determines the quality of the project. OMA’s scheme is based on two intersecting axes – one is the new arcade that runs north-south through the existing buildings; the other is the ambulatory, running east-west through the middle of the slab. From the entrance, a system of escalators leads directly to the public gallery of the assembly hall, a rectangle that completely surrounds the parliamentarians. The entire mezzanine level contains facilities for the press: a linear beam of editorial offices and a suspended press plaza for more public events such as press conferences. On the ground floor – basically a lobby – segments are screened off for the more informal kinds of exchanges planned by the parliament. The oval structure contains three superimposed conference rooms connected by a spiralling ramp. The ground floor area also contains the reception and stage accommodation for the Department of Petitions (to the left); petitions are displayed in steel storage cabinets as tangible evidence of the volume of public participation in the parliamentary process. |
