NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
NIO architecten, Profile of the Dutch architecture firm NIO architecten
Een nieuwe entree voor een stad ontwerpen is nogal een heftige opgave. Vooral als je zo snel van niets naar iets gaat, van een snelwegomgeving naar een nieuwe dichtbebouwde stedelijke omgeving. Rijdend richting het centrum van Amersfoort passeer je deze ongelijkvloerse kruising, met aan weerszijden geen wanden van neutraal grijs beton maar wanden voorzien van parelmoer glasmozaïek en een fijn ribbelreliëf. Je merkt al snel dat het niet zomaar om een civieltechnische onderdoorgang gaat, maar om iets bijzonders, een toverachtige passage, vooral als je de vier in de lucht priemende lichtpylonen hebt ontwaard.
In mijn jeugd maakte ik modelvliegtuigen, merendeels uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Messerschmitt Bf-109, Supermarine Spitfire, Fiat G.55 Centauro, Iljoesjin II-2, en vele vele andere). Stuk voor stuk waren ze heel precies gemaakt, zonder lijmresten, in de juiste kleuren geschilderd en voorzien van de juiste emblemen. Op nieuwjaarsdag bond ik er rotjes onder en blies ze op.
It’s a well-known adage that the knife cuts both ways. What this means is that each advantage has its disadvantage, that there’s a drawback to everything. This makes it an unanswerable platitude that results in a great deal of apathy. Better than a knife that cuts both ways is a knife with two blades, which share the same handle and where each blade has a single cutting edge. This is known as a twin blade. It allows you to cut two different things at a single stroke or to facilitate two dissimilar functions – or characters – at one and the same time. And that’s the idea behind the houseboat.
Recently a new monograph of NIO architecten was published by Equal Books. The 418 page thick publication gives an overview of the works from 2000 until 2011 by NIO architecten. It can be purchased at our office, simply by sending an email with your coordinates to nio(at)nio.nl. This monograph is English/Korean and costs 39,50 euro (excluding shipping) when you order it at our office (in the stores it is 60,55 euro)
Click here for the website of the publisher Equal Books
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.
Het ontwerp voor het strandwachtershuisje Nesselande is heel simpel en compact. Door zijn bolle, perfect elliptische vorm is het niet alleen ruimtelijk compact, maar oogt het ook compact. En het is simpel omdat het ontwerp één idee is. Iedereen zal de gedachte onmiddellijk begrijpen: een oog van zand, oftewel een zandoog, dat 180 graden vrij uitkijkt op het strand van Nesselande. Het strandwachtershuisje houdt letterlijk een oogje in het zeil
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.
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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.
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