MSc1 & MSc2 Specialization Hybrid Buildings by Building Typology > Spring Semester 2012 > Parool Triangle at the Wibautstraat, Amsterdam.

The MSc1 has a complex structure alike the other Architecture specializations. All different program components of the MSc1 Hybrid Buildings aim to help students developing their architectural understanding and design ability in complex urban settings. Analysis, design, technical and theoretical matters are closely intertwined in order to create a challenging and intensive program. Class atmosphere is usually relaxed and friendly, wherein the students get all opportunities and responsibilities to develop an own architectural consciousness which will serve them through their entire Master career and beyond.

The MSc1 project is open to all MSc2 students as well, both as single free-choice components and as the complete Hybrid Buildings specific package (18 ECTS: Design Studio, Seminar Uran and Architectural Analysis; Seminar Architectural Studies).

The Hybrid Challenge Hybrid Buildings is concerned with the challenges and threats due to growing pressure on urbanised areas. These are even more relevant in places with scarcity of land and strong demand for building, as they potentially may lead to speculative operations and the disappearing of (cultural) legacies. Optimization and exploitation of available resources becomes a hot issue: how to realise more with less? How to realize / defend architectural quality from speculation? How to maintain specificity in a world of increasing genericity?

Typologies as we have known them for centuries are under pressure as they are not able anymore to cope with changing lifestyles and conditions. Digitalization has brought about a less physical context of action for many tasks, blurring boundaries between public and private and between time and space. Developments in politics and economics also increase this pressure on (public) building programs. What is the answer of architecture to this solicitations? How should traditional typology evolve to keep up-to-date with contemporary demands? Is there a need for new typologies?

Smart hybrid combinations (buildings and functions) can help to realize sustainability, both at the level of energetic consumption / waste and at the socio-economic level. Which combination will better profit of each other’s potentialities? How to deal with the building of the future in a view of integral approach and complexity?

Hybrid Buildings aims to develop added value in buildings by exploring the potentialities of functions to reinforce each-other, discovering new ways of combining typologies and posing the interventions in the framework of the city and its history. For Hybrid Buildings the development of the city takes place in continuity with a legacy of ideas and projects that form the field of the urban architectural discourse.

Assignment Design StudioParool Triangle, Amsterdam (AR1Au011 / 12 ECTs)The case study for the coming semester is provided by the so-called Parool Triangle in Amsterdam. This is an urban site along the Wibautstraat, running parallel to the Amstel river. The location lends its triangular shape from its original function of railway junction and the name Parool from one of the Dutch newspapers once located in the area. The site presents itself as a truly ‘modern’ XX century enclave within a XIX century urban setting. Buildings of architect as Bakema Van der Broek, Berghoef, Kraaivanger and Ingwersen compose an urban scene originally intended as a piece of the garden city idea of Van Eesteren’s expansion plan (AUP, 1934).

The municipality of Amsterdam recently decided to tackle the Wibautstraat and the areas around it. A dedicated project-office (http://www.wibautaandeamstel.nl/) was set up with the aim to manage, stimulate and coordinate all interventions around the Wibautstraat - including the redesign of the Wibautstraat itself as an urban boulevard. As the most functions on the Parool Triangle moved away, the area is now ready for redevelopment. The Spanish architect Busquets designed the new (large-scale) masterplan for the Parool Triangle which was intended to be completed in 2011 and whose starting is now postponed to 2013 due to the economic crisis. In the meantime the existing buildings has been temporarily turned into ‘incubators’ for innovative and creative starting business - which is actually conferring an unprecedented level of liveliness and attractiveness to the area.  

The assignment is to design an architectural intervention able to act as catalyst for urban transformation. The building(s) to be designed will –in other words- be able to orient and stimulate (re)development in this area as an alternative to traditional urban design and masterplan practices. Specifically, the design will offer an alternative to the plan Busquets as this one shows the limits of large-scale top-down intervention in times of weak economies. In this view we consider the existing urban setting as an objective presence and assume it as it is, as the starting point to position the architectural intervention. The question of eventually renew, reuse of substitute the existing objects on site has to be placed as well within this discussion.

As to the building program envisaged for the building(s) the assignment is to investigate the hybridization of traditional typologies as a tool for (economic / social) sustainability. The design proposal will elaborate around the district library (neighbourhood library), a basic culture maker increasingly under the threat of disappearing due to shortage on public funding in times of economic malaise. The students will look at possible additional programs that render libraries more sustainable.  What type of building is the library of our times? Dwellings will complete the building program offering the designer enough building mass for a relevant urban intervention.

Hybridity The hybridity of the proposed assignment is threefold:

-              The assignment requires the formulation of proposals on the cutting edge between the disciplines of Urbanism and Architecture. This is an hybrid disciplinary approach as we intend to use architecture as main tool for urbanism.

-              It refers to a programmatic hybridity as it researches the possibilities of producing added value by combining more functions into a new designed setting – though not necessarily one single building: updating typologies to the XXI century values.

-              The expression / architectural language of the building reaches now beyond the obsolete binomial form-function. As the new hybrid building aims to develop added value, the ‘image’ of the building should address this added value above the components of the hybrid.

Besides, the building-technical design of the building should address hybridity as well – both as load bearing systems / materialization and as challenge to research building sustainability.

Seminar Architectural and Urban Analysis The Architecture of the Urban Boulevard(AR1Au015 / 3 ECTs) This seminar is closely related to the design assignment as it deals with the same research area tackling related urban theme’s. Particularly, the study of the urban boulevard as bearing structure in the urban development will be the focus of this seminar. Which are the conditions that make a boulevard (a street) successfully becoming a positive urban maker? What is the ‘architectural’ structure at the basis of the renewed Wibautstraat and what relationships exist there between architectural objects and the street? In this seminar students works in groups mapping the related urban and architectural conditions. The outcomes of the seminar are twofold. On the one side the seminar provides more insight about the physical context of the design assignment and on the other side it delivers students general knowledge as analytical skills.

Seminar Architectural Studies The Architecture of the City (AR1Au032 / 3 ECTs)During this seminar students will engage in theories of urban architecture and study the relationships between written architecture and designed architecture. The seminar has a variable setting which adapt to the changing situation of students’ groups and design assignment. Outcomes are general skills in defining and analyse theoretical issues and specific ability in grounding a design project into the disciplinary context of architecture. This second outcome, although not necessarily linked to the design assignment, might be of help by the justification of design choices and an engine of further research.

Coordinator Olindo Caso (o.caso@tudelft.nl)

Student assistents Michael Tjia (m.l.k.tjia@tudelft.nl), Teun Verkerk (t.j.verkerk@tudelft.nl)

Staff Olindo Caso, Henk Engel, Esther Gramsbergen, Maarten Korpershoek, Rajan Ritoe, Lara Schrijver, Willemijn Wilms Vloet

 

The MSc1 curriculum is completed by the following courses shared by all MSc1 Architecture specializations:

 

Delft Lectures in Architectural Design (AR1A060 / 3 ECT’s)

This lecture series is centrally organized by the Department of Architecture and offered to all master’s specializations in architecture.

Delft Seminars on Building Technology (AR1A075 / 6 ECT’s)

The seminars are organized by the Department of Building Technology for all master’s specializations in architecture. The seminars offer lectures and workshops. These last are targeted on the specializations.

Delft Lectures on Architectural History (AR1A065 / 3 ECTs)

This lecture series is organized by the chair of Architectural History. It is offered to all master’s specializations in architecture.