NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
At the beginning of the year 2003 a bus station was built on the forecourt of Hoofddorp’s Spaarne Hospital. This facilities block is located in the middle of a square and is a public area in the form of an island that serves as a junction for the local bus service. The design of this kind of building is generally neutral, but here the aim was to create a strong, individual image that was less austere and generic. Hence, the building was designed in the tradition of Oscar Niemeyer as a cross between white modernism and black Baroque.
Until recently the Dutch city centres were the stage for a shopping audience, but the last couple of years shops have been grouping together and moving more and more off-centre to develop themselves into compact shopping islands in the periphery. Despite their relatively limited size, these little shopping paradises bring about numbers of visitors that can easily compete with big amusement parks and that make the neighbouring city centres go pale. What do we offer these visitors, who until recently did their shopping in the safe surroundings of the old Dutch city centre, in which every glance into a shop window could be alternated with the well-known image of little alleys, streetlamps and hard-burnt red clinkers? In a compact setting such as this one on the ‘Wirosingel’ in Roermond, the audience enters a new experience, the inner world of Betty Blue, a world in which the shop and the customer communicate with each other one-to-one.
What happened here? On the walls and ceilings of the tunnel a strange imprint is visible. A big, whimsical and brightly coloured imprint, an imprint of an unreal and immeasurable shape. As if during the building an unearthly thing got stuck between the formwork. As if the soul of the former landscape, being rooted up by bulldozers, has gone underground. As if the winding pattern of old polder roads, which has made place for rigid urban developments, takes revenge in the tunnel.
In a continuation of the Herenstraat in Voorburg and in the underworld of the Utrechtse Baan the first Life Style Department Store of the Netherlands is realized, a store in which different brands of clothing, shoes, accessories, cosmetics and cappuccino are being sold and that, in contrast with the grey and hard civil world of the viaduct, in its colour scheme and contours evokes the strangeness of a different world.
Winner of the Dutch Design Award 2010
For most bridges, whether they are fixed or moveable, an architect is not required. They are simply “engineered”, as they call it in professional circles, which results in functional constructions devoid of any poetry whatsoever. Unless it be big, prestigious civil works for which the necessary extra financial resources are reserved. That is why it is actually quite nice that for this relatively small bridge an architect was considered necessary, thus escaping civil engineering indifference.
‘The twelve houses form an integral part of a soundproof embankment along a secondary road from Diependaal, an exclusive residential district in the woods of Hilversum. Despite its inhospitable setting and the clients’ initial scepticism, the futuristic, not to say fantastic, design of the houses attracted users who bought their houses of the drawing board, several years before delivery.
Think of Dutch public bus transport and what you see is minimal bus shelters: one small plastic bench and standard 30 by 30 paving stones. If you want to be polite you could call it ‘rational’ or Calvinistic, but actually it is simply poor. No wonder no one takes the bus with pleasure. With the design of the Kerntraject Zuidtangent, we wanted to boost the image of public bus transport by reacting against this common picture. We wanted the steel to dance and the concrete to speak. We wanted to cross technique with flora, Schiphol with the Floriade, super service with supra-identity. This way the Kerntraject Zuidtangent could instantly be given a face. Passengers had to experience that they were making use of something special. The common image of the public transport-passenger, who is standing waiting in a cramped bus shelter, would get a counterpart with style: there is bus transport and there is the Zuidtangent!
As soon as one gets the upper hand, the other one goes underground. It is the same in Amstelveen. Where the Beneluxbaan gets precedence, the other traffic routes that cross it, are built underneath, resulting in tunnels and crossovers. The term ‘underground’ should then be taken both literally and figuratively. These tunnels and crossovers are hidden from the physical space (from the eye) as well as from the mental space (from the concept); dead functional things for which no one could have any feelings. It is an art to make these kinds of spaces specific again and to bring them back to the symbolic circuit.
The building for the ZEP LeisureParkis based on Zeeland’s two most vital natural elements: wind and water. The image that the building evokes is that of a dance between a wave and a whirlwind. The wave is the horizontal binding theme for the events park, the whirlwind is the twenty-five meter high tower that can be seen from afar and that can be climbed by the daredevil.
We live in a world that is becoming more and more transparent. Riddles are being solved, secrets uncovered, irregularities glossed over, twists rationalized: the other becomes the same. At the point of complete transparency, we end up in a state of complete obscenity as well. After all, when all veils are gone, we are left with nothing but trivial nudity. The temptation has disappeared.
Share this:
architecten © 2011