NEXT 29/79

Type: offices Location: Amsterdam Client: Lingotto Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Joost Lemmens, Agata Piet, Ines Meuws Floor area / size: 3000m2 Contractor: Theuns Construction: Strackee Installations: Bulters&Bulters Start building: 2009-08-15 Completion: 2010-01-01 Status: completed

2010-02-25 Femke Halsema and Maarten van Poelgeest open 'HET LAB'

The Chewing Gum Factory: ‘THE LAB’ is a project initiated by Lingotto Vastgoed bv. The purchase of an industrial building of 3000m2 from the ‘50 at the Willem Fenengastraat 2 was the start of a metamorphosis. The building consists of 3 large halls of approximately 600m2 in open connection with each other and an office area with 3 floors. The main bearing structure consists of a concrete frame and concrete floors. The facades are made of masonry.

The assignment is twofold: first, the design of an overall concept for the office section and secondly the transformation of the 3 large halls in rentable office for creative businesses.
The land surrounding the building is also included in the development and will provide the offices with parking lots and outdoor spaces.

Type: Housing Location: Oosterhamrikkanaal Groningen Client: Nijestee Groningen Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Joost Lemmens and Ayelet Kamar Erez Floor area / size: 178 dwellings Competition: Invited Competition 2009 results undisclosed Status: Exhibition and publication

At the invitation of building corporation Nijestee, NEXT architects has participated in the Intense Low-Rise manifestation, an initiative of the Municipality of Groningen to identify options for increased urban population density. The manifestation presents 52 designs for 30 locations in existing urban areas and offers a realistic study as a response to the current national debate: how do we optimize the use of city space to decrease the pressure on rural areas? 

 
The project is located on a former industrial site at the periphery of the city center. The site is characterized by the schizophrenic conditions of a very attractive west side on the waterfront and a problematic east side with elevated infrastructures. NEXT architects developed a strategy to maximize the experience of the waterfront with the simple gesture to extend the west façade. This creates a variety urban areas as well as a diversity of housing types.

Type: Offices for creative industries Location: NDSM area Amsterdam Client: Red Concepts BV Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Joost Lemmens, Jurriaan Hillerström Floor area / size: 6.100 m2 and 5.525 m Cost: 15.000.000 euro Build engineer: LBP advisors Competition: 2008 Invited competition result undisclosed

The NDSM area in the north of Amsterdam is distinguished by the big industrial buildings that, despite altered functions over time, demonstrate a consistent and timeless identity. NEXT architects has been asked to develop a strategy for the development of two new buildings within the context of the existing brick giants. Starting with the idea that new buildings on this site should adopt the concept of a variable program within a strong shell, the idea expands to include timeless identity which acquires character as time passes.

The logistic concept is based on a flexible system of deep floors in combination with an efficient infrastructure: the buildings are built up around a central court that introduces daylight into the very heart of the structure.

Type: Exhitions and manifestations Location: Rotterdam Client: Department of Culture Municipality Rotterdam, Historical Museum Rotterdam Team: Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Bart Reuser with Toon van Schijndel, Jurriaan Hillerström, Abdel Tutu, Maria Teresa Durao, Menwua Deng Collaborator / associate: Kossmann.DeJong Exhibition Architects Floor area / size: 10.000 m2 Cost: 45.000.000 Status: study 2008

Together with exhibition architects Kossmann & De Jong, NEXT architects has been asked to develop a strategy for Rotterdam’s new City Museum. This museum, which would encompass  the existing Historical Museum of Rotterdam, will be a place to depict and discuss the contemporary city, its history, and dream of its future: a place to celebrate the urban identity of this international harbour city.

The concept of the building is derived from the idea of a giant collection of showcases, apparently stacked and combined to create a three-dimensional open structure. The smaller showcases house the permanent collection of the museum and thereby function as a public depot; the bigger showcases generate space for temporary exhibitions. City life continues within the framework of the stacked boxes; the interstitial spaces function as new public domains and represent the dynamic of the Rotterdam street-life. It is a building without thresholds.

Type: Five dwellings Location: Almere Overgooi Client: Villa van Vijven Team: Michel Schreinemachers, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk with Joost Lemmens, Filipe Pocas, Esther ten Brink, Rolf Pederson, Maria Salinas Floor area / size: 1.300 sqm Cost: Euro 1.500.000,00 Contractor: Bouwbedrijf Siebenga Build engineer: Adviesburo Nieman, VDW Bouwadvies Construction: Pieters Bouwtechniek Installations: Van Duin Installation Management, Installatiebedrijf Hoekstra-Mildam Photographer: Iwan Baan Start building: January 2007 Completion: April 2008 Status: Completed

2009-11-18 Creative Commons: Dwell featuring Villa Overgooi 2009-08-07 Nomination Europa House Award 2008-11-10 broadcasting 2008-08-12 NEXT nominated for the AM NAi Award 2008 2008-04-17 golden nomination

The Overgooi project concerns a villa-like residential building with five specific accommodations commissioned by the Villa Van Vijven (Villa For Five) Association that consists of five private clients.

The opportunity arose to develop five residential units on a 5000 m² lot – with the restriction that they had to look like a single villa.

Based on this fact and on various qualities of the environment we implemented a series of transformations on the building volume. On the basis of a number of workshops with the residents this resulted in five specific accommodations, each with its very own character.

Each storey has been rotated a quarter turn in relation to the others, giving the residences exceptional orientation, incidence of sunlight and spatiousness. Subsequently, the entire building was raised to give each residence a second floor view – over the dike – of the Gooimeer.

Type: Master plan + Dwelling Location: Eck en Wiel Client: Stichting Locus a/d Rijn Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Claudia Linders with Joost Lemmens, Rolf Pederson Collaborator / associate: Labeled / Claudia Linders and Cor Kalfsbeek Contractor: Aannemersbedrijf van der Helden BV Construction: Goudstikker - de Vries Installations: Walter Jansen Photographer: Lisette van de Pavoordt Special thanks to: Cor Kalfsbeek (Masterplan / House Kuenzli) and Thijs van Hees Landschape design Completion: July 2007 Status: Realised

2008-06-27 Festive opening 2007-12-01 Huis te Wiel in De Gelderlander 2007-10-01 Huis te Wiel nears completion

The design for the ‘Huis te Wiel’ estate is a careful composite of the existing farm, two new houses and an annex.

By adding the new buildings, we created a courtyard. The existing farm, a national monument, has preserved its main building status and the hierarchy is strengthened as the new buildings are constructed like this farm: its slanted roof and the different directions of the ridges of the front of the house and of the attached barn are copied in the new buildings.

The buildings’ unity and coherence are increased by adding structuralizing elements – duckboards and platforms – that mark the transition between the collective and the private. The decoration of the yard includes elements – a hedge, formal beds of plants – that refer to the location’s past. The master plan design echoes the various strata of the country estate’s rich history.

The materialization of new buildings refers to an agricultural past, the yard and the composition refer to the history of ‘Huis te Wiel’.

Type: Dwelling Location: Almere, The Netherlands Client: Private Team: Michel Schreinemachers, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk with Joost Lemmens, Tara Steenvoorden, Wingjim Yick Floor area / size: 180 sqm Start building: March 2010 Status: Preliminary design

Type: Shopping mall with office buildings Location: Beijing Client: Huihuang Real Estate Ltd. Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Chen Song, Jiang Xiao Fei, Guo Zhi Fang. Jia Yuan, Xin Hong, Mo Lisheng, Yang Zhong Hui, Zen Zhao Ying, Yuan Duo, Ma Qin, Qin Qin, Zhang Rui, Su Yue, Wu Yun, Zhang Yu Hua, Lu Ming, Jiang Nan Collaborator / associate: HAYA architects Floor area / size: 180.000 sqm Start building: 2005-11-01 Completion: 2007-09-01 Status: realized

The Huihuang International Plaza is a building complex of 180.000m2 in size and accommodates shopping, offices, residential, conference, a hotel and parking. Four of the five towers were initially designed as office towers. Because of changing market conditions, three of the four had to change into residential towers over night. As a clause, the design had to be able to change back to offices before the building was completed. To anticipate on ever changing requirements, an architectonic concept is developed in which residential blurs with office. This ‘blurring’ makes both residential and office in representation possible. ‘Blurring’ is achieved by a changing relieve between stone and glass; the foundations of the buildings being more stone, the tops more glass. This pattern aims to visually dissolve the program, as well as the height of the towers. The architectonic concept is strengthened by economics: the higher the floor, the more view is offered, the higher the market value can be.

Location: Xidan, Beijing Client: Meisheng Real Estate Ltd. Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Wopke Tjipke Schaafstal, Bobby de Graaf, Chen Song, Yang Zhong Hui and Jia Yuan Floor area / size: 400 sqm Status: Completed

2007-10-01 Selling center of Xidan shopping nears completion

Water Stone is a high-end residential project located in the centre of Beijing. The assignment asked for a 400sqm so-called sales centre; an exhibition-like pavilion in which the apartments will be sold before they are actually built. The building has to accommodate private meetings like closing financial agreements and signing contracts while at the same time it has to seduce the public to enter. The building aims to express this ambiguous tension of simultaneously being public and private.

A standard rectangular building envelop is reshaped into an envelop that has three straight and two inclined faces. The reshaping creates a volume with two strong directions: one side seems to open up towards a street corner while the other side seems to close the building of. To emphasize the tension between public and private, the inclined elevations are executed in transparent glass while the straight walls are executed in a translucent double layered skin. Where the building opens up towards the public completely, a narrow casted view over a 1:100 scale model of the Water Stone is offered.

Type: Office and commercial space Location: Beijing Client: Golden Star Real Estate Team: John van de Water, Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Wopke Tjipke Schaafstal, Bobby de Graaf, Chen Song, Guo Zhi Fang, Jia Yuan, Jao Peng, Xin Hong, and Li Jia Collaborator / associate: HAYA architects Floor area / size: 60.000 sqm Start building: 2007-11-01 Status: under construction

Twist is a twin-building located near the East 5th ring road. The building will contain mostly service apartments. These apartments can accommodate start-up companies, which makes that the building has to blend between apartment and office building. The design-strategy follows three steps: projecting a typical NS orientated Beijing slab, rotating and finally twisting the slab in order to optimize daylight and view. The twisted slab is taken as a starting point to manipulate the buildings massing proportions, following the analogy that people prefer to live in a tower over living in a slab. Towards the new city street, the building will follow a smaller scale to enclose a square. Towards the South side of the site, the buildings will take on a more urban scale. To increase the diversity of the apartments, floors are proposed with three different window-heights.  Metaphorically, the twin building resembles two dynamic Dragons encompassing a shining pearl.

Location: ZPARK Beijing Client: Beijing Century Real Estate Team: John van de Water with Chen Song, Wopke Schaafstal, Lui Gui Feng, Li Gui Feng and Bart Reuser, Marij Floor area / size: 55.000 m2 Start building: august 2007

2009-08-27 Google Earth View 2008-05-10 Sneak preview 2007-11-10 Construction at full speed 2007-08-07 Construction started

This IBM research-office building is situated in a new, green IT-development zone in North-west Beijing. The given site is elliptical and according to the urban plan, buildings are to be single entities. IBM aims to provide a healthy working environment, as part of their vision to provide a productive environment.

To maximize the building area, the building envelop follows the site restrictions and therefore is elliptically shaped. To stimulate a healthy environment, the building aims to maximize its relations with its green surrounding landscape.  

As such, the building consists of one two-story ellipse that rests on four smaller ellipses. The top two floors contain offices; the collective program is concentrated in the smaller ellipses.

The meandering space between the ground floor ellipses opens up towards the surrounding landscapes and accommodates the central lobby and three internal gardens.

Type: Daycare centre Location: Amsterdam Client: Hestia Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Claudia Linders, Joost Lemmens, Emanuelle Faustle, Pieter Mulder, Filipe Pocas Collaborator / associate: Labeled / Claudia Linders Floor area / size: 560 sqm Cost: Euro 670.000 Status: Final design

2009-08-16 Building permit daycare center

The Hestia Day-Care Centre follows the philosophy of Reggio Emilia. This philosophy also contains a number of explicit statements on architecture, which have been translated into a spatial concept for the new building.

The building as a city, as a collection of rooms: the building becomes a collection of different spaces in which the children can discover new places all the time; may go on a voyage of discovery. All of the spaces are connected to each other just as they are in a real city and you can go from a big room to a small one, from a high room to a low one.

A framework of service modules provides structure: the various spaces are structured by being fit into a grid. The body includes all service modules, such as sanitary facilities, store rooms and bedrooms.

Interior-exterior continuity: the grid is not confined to the building but also becomes the design concept for the exterior space. The rooms may be decorated with different hard surfaces and plants. The exterior is extended throughout the building by designing various rooms like exterior space.

Different perceptions of scale: different scales can be experienced as a result of the subtle use of height differences between the rooms themselves. In the central space, the large scale is perceptible because of the way the group spaces are separated, a smaller scale is perceptible because of the height and an even smaller scale is perceptible because of the sheltered spaces.

Type: Dwelling Location: Werkhoven Client: G. Van Echtelt Team: Michel Schreinemachers with Joost Lemmens, Wout Smits, Vincent Heck, Shyla Rietveld, Patrick Maisano, Floris de Ridder Collaborator / associate: JMA, Amsterdam Floor area / size: 200 sqm Cost: Euro 255.000,00 Contractor: Timmer- en aannemersbedrijf J.H. de Vries Build engineer: Pieters Bouwtechniek Photographer: Jeroen Musch Start building: May 2004 Completion: December 2005 Status: Completed

The wish of the client was to create a house which draws on the ideals associated with the traditional farmhouse.

The volume is created through a number of subtle manipulations such as the vertical and horizontal displacement of the main elements along a sort of a fault-line: this shift reinforces the perspective of the surrounding landscape, optimising the view of the vast horizon.  The floor plan has been organized in such a way that it achieves a continuity between the different  functions involved with a residential program, while separating service areas such as the main entranceway, bath and pantry. 

The main area is built using traditional details. Relying on knowledgeable specialists, we were able to construct the house using bricks and straw. The bigger window openings cut though this volume, open up the interior and connect it to the landscape.

Type: Student dwellings Location: Haidian District, Beijing, China Client: Beijing Normal University Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Floor area / size: 49.000 sqm Competition: Invited competition 2006, second prize

Chinese university dormitories are strictly divided worlds of girls and boys. For this typical university dormitory, 12 sqm rooms are shared by four students; each room has a closed balcony.

The building will be accommodate a total of 3.500 students.  In order to maximize the distance between boys and girls, two L-shaped buildings are situated opposite each other. The boys’ dorm is situated to the south; it is two floors lower and by reducing the building height sunlight is guaranteed to reach the two enclosed courtyards.

The two buildings are connected by a recreation program that can be used from both sides.  The elevation concept is derived from nature and abstractly resembles the growing of ivy. Balconies embrace the building and create a play between the individual rooms and the building complex as a whole.

Type: Dwelling Location: Enschede Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Floor area / size: 200 sqm Status: Competition

This competition entry for a town house presents a residence with unprecedented spatial contrasts. The combination of a belle etage with cascading stairs results in a cross shape that forms the centre of the house.

The cross functions as a spatial, functional and organizational foundation. It carries the daylight onto the heart of the residence – usually the darkest part of the house. Several private rooms for personal use, such as studies, bedrooms, a bathroom and a roof garden, have been arranged around the cross. 

The façade is an important part of this house as the contrast between open and closed is expressed optimally in the materials: glass for the open belle etage and a dark brick front for the private rooms.

Type: Prototype of a dwelling Location: IJburg, Amsterdam Client: ING Real Estate Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with David Spierings, Remco van Gijzen Floor area / size: 220 m2 Cost: Euro 370.000,00 Competition: May 2006 Status: Preliminary design

The Beauty of Simplicity
 

In short, building is nothing but connecting and stacking modular units: an upgraded kind of Lego. And the simpler the connecting and stacking is, the more efficiently one can build.

So... we based Casa Duplo on the Lego brick. The design consists of a number of connected and stacked simple volumes. The efficient way of connecting and stacking results in terraces, loggias and a large overhang that can serve as a carport, with the interior-exterior relation playing an important part. 

The need to secure adequate privacy is at odds with the wish to bring as much of the exterior into the interior as possible. Casa Duplo’s window openings each face a different part of the environment, thus directing the eye to the space between the surrounding buildings. The façade, which consists of horizontal wooden slats, lets the daylight in and allows a view but obscures   the view into the house.

Type: Office building Client: IPMMC Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Jurriaan Hillerström, Remco van Gijzen en David Spierings Collaborator / associate: Rudy Uytenhaak Floor area / size: 2.500 sqm

This design is based on a simple and very flexible setup: a solid four-bay-wide building with the closed office programme organized in the two narrower exterior bays and a wider middle section that is available for an open programme.

Removing floors in the right places of the middle section creates vertical connections between all of the floors and allows the light to find its way deep into the building.

All special functions, such as the entrance, the concept department and the cafeteria, can be situated in the open middle section to create relations and views in the centre of the building. 

The heart of the building is an open space, a diagonal plaza over several floors. The storeys will function as a huge staircase, where people can meet and see each other arrive.

Type: Art Location: Zoetermeer Client: Municipality Zoetermeer Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers with Joost Lemmens, Rolf Pederson Cost: Euro 90.000,00

Our proposal for the Water Theatre on the Oostkade in Zoetermeer, 6 metres below sea level, takes the form of an intervention in public space; however, the intervention is not meant to be the actual work of art, but to make art out of a public space: a theatre. 

We will widen the stairway from the dike to the water to act as a grandstand. A curtain that responds to the presence of passers-by, to on-lookers, will frame the view. The proposed dock will extend further into the water. It is a potential podium, but in a much stronger sense, real life is the podium.  

The curtain is a permanent screen of flowing water; 6 metres high. It shows manifestly how the polder is situated in relation to sea level. The flowing water dramatises the level of the polder. When closed, the curtain acts like a shutter, obscuring the view offered from the Oostkade of the canal and the houses. The curtain is linked to sensors in the bank that respond when a passer-by takes a step onto the bank. Then the curtain opens in front of the visitor, suddenly showing a view of the waterway. Everyday, familiar reality suddenly becomes a work of art: reality is art.

Type: Kindergarten Location: Chaoyang district, Beijing Client: Xintian Real Estate Ltd Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens with Chen Song, Ma Qing, Zai Xin, Floor area / size: 3.000 sqm Status: preliminary design

In a large new residential area, NEXT was commissioned to design a series of public buildings, including a kindergarten, school, club and sales centre.  

The first building to be executed is the kindergarten, which must be ready to receive 400 children in 2006. The kindergarten is created through three conceptual architectural steps: a projection of the typical Chinese school on the site, all classrooms face South.

The introduction of the common room transforms the traditional linear design of the school in an unexpected way: by 'pushing' the volume of the common room through the rectangular structure, all the floors are displaced along a curve in a stepped manner, creating an amphitheatre-like space inside the building, and creating a canopy from the overhang of the upper floors on the outside of the building.  

The design organizes all classrooms around an internal space, the children's amphitheatre. This theatre is the social heart of the building: here children meet, see, play and are stimulated to learn. In this design, inside and outside are inextricably linked: form and content are one.    

Type: Public space / Art Location: Tilburg Client: KORT; Municipality Tilburg Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, Joost Lemmens, Geoffrey Moote Floor area / size: 36 sqm Cost: Euro 90.000,00 Status: completed

2010-03-01 growth monument officially opened 2009-09-01 Start construction 2008-01-12 Restart

A monument to represent the blossoming and flourishing of the city of Tilburg, a ‘textielgroeimonument’ (textile growth monument), will be realized at the Textielmuseum Tilburg in 2009 as part of the celebration of the 200^th anniversary of the city. Since the Mommerscomplex that accommodates the textile museum is metaphorically speaking a living monument, would it perhaps be possible to create a textile growing monument that is literally built up from living matter?

We will place the new volume in the open space in front of the present entrance and the chimney: a shape that brings to mind the high factory buildings; a reprise of the building structure of the textile museum.

The overgrowth lends to the monument the dynamics of nature. It literally grows, and this ensures that it always looks alive. It is not a massive volume but a transparent, open structure. The structure includes a void: the same typical house-shape – but with its ridge on a parallel with Goirkestraat – and thus a reminder of the building originally located on this site, Christiaan Mommers’ house, in which a single loom sowed the seeds of  the current complex.

A platform connects the interior space with the courtyard. It provides a possible connection to the monument and a starting point in the open space around the complex. It facilitates encounters and exchanges and in doing so it adopts the part of accelerator in the creative public domain that is currently being developed in Goirkestraat. And so as the volume turns the past into a visible experience in the present, the platform is the first step towards the future.

Type: High-tech office and production space Location: Lufthansa Area, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens, Chen Song, Wang Bo and Zang Rui Floor area / size: 350.000 sqm Competition: 2005 invited competition, second prize Status: Preliminary Design

Watchdata is a relatively young IT-company specializing in data security. The 62.000sqm new headquarters will accommodate the company’s general office departments, research labs and workshops.

Given the young age of the company and the enormous growth of the workforce, the design aims to create the conditions for meaningful communication between the individual employees and departments.

The program is organized according to a clear hierarchy: representative program faces south, factories face north. The different functions and departments are connected on the first floor by means of an ‘interaction-floor’. All public functions are concentrated on this floor, making it the company’s main square.

The ‘interaction floor’ encloses four internal courtyards that are adorned by two special pavilions: a meeting diamond and a sports-pavilion. The companies ‘W’-logo can be seen again in the elevation and construction; this is where logo, architecture and construction synthesize.

Type: Housing Location: Delft Client: DARE project development Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens Floor area / size: 680 sqm Cost: Euro 1.515.000 Competition: Competition, nominated

‘Hoeksteen’ (Cornerstone) is a design for a residential building at the far end of Zuiderstraat that not only serves as a “lantern”, but is also the link between Delft’s city centre and the Zuiderpoort area that is currently under construction.

The meeting of these worlds is literally rendered perceptible: behind the old façade, we placed a new structure in the urban tissue.

The intersecting lines between the old and the new shape the new volume; the shape is adapted, on the one hand, to link up with the old buildings along Achterom and, on the other, manifests as part of the Zuidpoort area. The structure at the Achterom side underlines the old façades by making a cut between the old and the new. The incisions scale down the structure itself.

The commercial premises on the ground floor face all-round. Three small volumes are created that each face a different street side, held together by the courtyard on which all of the front doors are located. Two staircases, on Asvest and on Achterom, lend access to the courtyard. Passersby can look into the courtyard through the large opening in the façade on Zuiderstraat. It provides a view of the private world hidden behind the façade.

Location: Beijing | Haidian District Client: Beijing Gem Real Estate Development Co. Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water, Joost Lemmens with Chen Song

Luiming is a high-income, low-rise residential neighbourhood. The assignment asked for the design of a 700 sqm sales center. The site is characterized by its special natural beauty: a view of the mountains and the presence of old trees.  

To exploit these qualities, a building was developed in which two architectural routes are incorporated into one single volume. To create this volume, the three core functions of the sales center -exhibitions, offices and services- are organized parallel to each other. Then, the exhibition section is lifted onto the office volume, while the volume housing the service functions is sunk in underground.  

As a result, two architectural routes arise: one outside route leading over the roof of the building and one route inside the building. Both routes are akin to walking along a mountain trail. The outside route leads to a viewing platform, from which the neighbourhood can be overlooked; the inside route leads along exhibitions to a void, which offers a framed view out over the mountains.

Type: Housing, urban plan Location: Chile Client: Elemental Chile Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Floor area / size: 10.000 sqm

Wallhouse is a flexible strategy that combines possibilities for a wide diversity of housing types with a great differentiation of urban spaces. 

This competition asked for an urban housing plan for lowest income group in Chili. I ddemanded for flexibility in such a way that the inhabitants were able to extend their houses in the near future. The main element in this spatial strategy is a construction wall that contains the basic amenities necessary for a house: a bathroom, stairs, a kitchen and an entrance. Each individual house can be extended towards the back by adding rooms. At the same time the wall is a structural urban element. It creates an urban plan with two faces: a clear and formal front side towards the streets and a characteristic informal side towards the back.

Type: Pavilion Client: Arboretum Kalmthout Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Cost: Euro 16.000,00 Competition: 2nd prize Status: Competition

Papilio is a pavilion for a butterfly garden in the Arboretum Kalmthout, Belgium. The concept for the pavilion was instigated by the metamorphosis of a butterfly.  

A flexible wooden construction is transformed, section by section, from a simple square to an open space covered by a wing; in this spot, the visitor can find information about butterflies, take shelter from the weather, rest a bit, and enjoy a beautiful panorama over the garden, all the while engaging in a special spatial experience.

Type: Pumping station Location: Amsterdam Client: dRO Amsterdam Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water Competition: Honourable mention

This is a design for a public utility building: a sewage-pumping station. Utilitarian buildings are junctions in the invisible infrastructure of a city and therefore crucial for its function. But since they house machines rather than people, they have no relation with people and thereby often have no relation with their surroundings. 

In an attempt to create this relation between the building and the surroundings, we added a second function to the pumping station, that of skate landscape. The shape is the result of a superimposition of the sewer station and regular skate elements.

The functional form generates an attractive sculptural quality and represents the dynamics of the program, both inside and out.

Type: Dwellings and commercial space Location: Den Bosch, The Netherlands Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water with Marion Mischke Floor area / size: 650 sqm Status: Competition

Twist is a design for three work-at-home residences on the Brugplein in ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Over a commercial ground level with a small footprint, three volumes are positioned to face the various urban conditions of the location: Brugstraat (busy, noisy), Havensingel (quiet, idyllic) and Brugplein (dynamic, wide view).

The three volumes accommodate working, sleeping and living facilities respectively. The residences, therefore, rotate through these volumes. As different floor levels are indicated for different facilities the three volumes differ in height.

The residences are accessed from a central point on level +1. Two tapered staircases from Havensingel and Brugstraat lend access to this central point.

Each residence covers three floors and has a roof garden. The external staircase is literally the pivot of the project and it emphasizes the transition from one function to another. It creates distance between the various programme units and in doing so creates a great residential experience.

Type: Extension of City Hall Client: Gemeente Rotterdam Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Waterwith Bart Cosijn, Stan Wagter, Arjan van Susteren, Joost Lemmens Status: Competition, nominated

idea-competition for the Municipality Office Rotterdam

Rotterdam, outgrowing its old city hall, was looking for new council offices in a new location. NEXT architects’ response to this assignment is to choose to reduce, and to top the old city hall, with the new programme by mirroring the old building on Coolsingel.

This duplication has city hall scale-leaping into the 21^st century.  Public facilities are accommodated in the old building in this structure, the extension provides the new work spaces and meeting facilities.

Type: Public Space / Art Location: Almere Client: Stichting Bosland Team: Bart Reuser, Marijn Schenk, Michel Schreinemachers, John van de Water with Stan Wagter, Marrit deJong Cost: Euro 1.000.000,00 Competition: 3rd Prize Status: On hold

design for 1 hectare ‘museum’-forest

This is not a design for a new forest but an operation that puts the existing forest in a new perspective. Just like a museum designer is unconcerned with museological objects as such, but rather focuses on the way people look at them, we took this assignment as a chance to transform the woods into a woods museum by creating the possibility of a new kind of perception. 

Adding a circular path with a 100-m diameter provides the woods with an extra dimension. On one end, the path reaches a height of 35 m and provides a view of the horizon, on the other end it drops to 3 m underground so people can experience the woods at ant height. The raised end of the path encloses a section of the woods and this creates an exceptional spot. The hectare of woodland that is shut in by the path will remain unkempt and transform into primeval forest, which makes it an example of the transformations woods may undergo through the years.

Over the past 27 years, the woods, which was originally a poplar plantation, has already developed into a highly varied section of forest, full of different types of plants, trees and animals. The process can be observed from the different levels of the circular path over the years: from bird’s-eye view to worm perspective. Creating the circular path requires a total of approximately 42 km of bamboo consisting of 18,750 trunks of 2.2 m long. We are still looking for financing.