A new building for SKVR in Rotterdam
Design Task Autumn Semester 2010
A new building for SKVR in Rotterdam. SKVR («Stichting Kunstzinnige Vorming Rotterdam» www.skvr.nl) provides classes in dance, music and other arts for children and the amateur public.
The new building will include representation and public spaces, a garden, areas for music, literature, dance, theatre and art activities, an administrative part and facilitating space, in total appr. 4‘500 m2.
Why Rotterdam
Since before the second world war, in which its centre was almost completely destroyed, Rotterdam has rebuilt itself as a modernist city in a continuous experiment. In the fabric of the city you can find the canonical modernism of the Van Nelle factory (1930), decorative modernism of the Grote Handelsgebouw (1953) the Lijnbaan shopping centre by van den Broek and Bakema (1953) that anticipates the architecture of the 1960’s, the perverse cube houses of to Piet Blom, Rem Koolhaas’ ironic and highly self aware Kunsthal and Frits van Dongen’s very fine housing in the Kop van Zuid. You will also find dullness, vulgarity and alienation, mixed with real beauty of the Weerhaven area near the Erasmus bridge, but also a love for the city by its inhabitants and a sense of possibility. It is a raw, working city that we hope you will learn to like.
The Professor‘s Position
www.tonyfretton.com
We are in a time of multiple architectural narratives and great openness, when many architects and students of architecture can make a contribution to the development of architecture. From my point of view this requires a combination of individual inventiveness, social awareness, a strong desire to make a communicative and habitable architecture by observing and interpreting the social, cultural and physical qualities of the place in which a new building is to be situated.
Now, that is a lot to do, and the best way to do it is by designing in good faith. So I have set a fairly straightforward program, perhaps a little more complex than usual, but rich and open to interpretation by you. I think that the best architectural ideas came from somewhere in the imagination that can only be accessed indirectly and not by logic. But I also believe that the finished building should be rational, constructionally sound and wonderful to inhabit. A combination of the imaginative and real is what I am aiming for, and I want to show you how it can be achieved using your own views and judgment.
Introduction: Tuesday 21st September 2010, 10:00 am in our ETH Studio HIL F61
Exercise Type: E
(Entwurf ohne integrierte Disziplin); work individually or in teams of two
Visit to the Location in Rotterdam:
12th - 13th October 2010 (travel and accomodation at students‘ own cost)
Contact: Studio HIL F61 / Office HIL H48 / fretton@arch.ethz.ch
Download: PDF
24.08.2010 webmaster@arch
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