ROCK l CHORD

Design number three returns to the ‘master plan’. In the two previous cases the client, who had ordered the master plan in the first place, had given us carte-blanche. The city council saw it otherwise however.

In order to solve a problem of scale – three towers on a platform reminded us too much of the master plan that OMA made for Lille, in a way being dwarfed, we came up with one monumental building that ‘looks’ like three units. It’s a spiral, a logo(s) made in concrete, which we have subsequently split up and pushed apart in three parts. Lengthwise and in the middle we have inserted a [...]circulation wall which is entirely covered with mirror glass. It interconnects the three buildings.

The glossy intermediate holes have to provide sufficient light and sight, direct or by indirect reflection. The problem of voyeurism between buildings is solved by applying a chessboard motive of alternate transparent and diffuse glass.

At the front the optical illusion of building standing apart is intensified by the reflection of the surrounding water. What one gets in reality is one ‘rocking’ building in which the elevator and the columns are the only vertical elements.

Circulation and sanitary facilities, entrancehall and meeting room are blocked together in the quadrant leaning over the farthest – so that landscape offices that gradually change from a wedge-shape to a T-shape can run through almost uninterruptedly from front to rear.

In the lower –wedge shaped- building at the other side of the parking deck, the spiral is present in the promenade that is wrapped around the building. Analogously we have here a ‘glossy’ building with a peel of concrete around it. Halfway the building, on level two, the reception desk is located (the presence of a double high parking deck allows for that).

It offers the simple possibility to let the building function intwo autonomous parts. Focused on the new housing district nearby, the lower part of the building can inhabit a public function.

Moving between high and low, thin and wide, this building holds the middle between a ‘tower’, with elevation shaft, and a ‘store’.

                Store l Turn l Toren (Tower)