thesis06/07
Voyage sur place, Hanzestedenplein, Antwerpen
in collaboration with Anne Mager
Master thesis as engineer architect at the Catholic University of Louvain, june 2006
Voyages sur place refers to the wanderings of the passer-bys who pace the plaza but also to the dream journeys that may take place on the plaza by occupying it or by planning ways of occupying it.
Thereby, we introduce the problematic of the public plaza that also constitutes the theme of this masters thesis for which we had to find a place were we could work out the link between an uncompleted public plaza and a building.
General implantation
At the border between the city and the basins, we structure the edges by organizing a succession of floor types expressing layers of different use: sidewalk, street, parking, sidewalk, dockside…The sidewalk gives a straight reference, whereas the dockside follows the water bank. A serie of constructions aimed at receiving functions related to the marina or the neighbourhood’s life (restaurants, districts antenna, information point, parking exits…) link the water and the street. When these blocks meet the Hanzestedenplein, they lengthen to reach the dockside, unrolling the plaza’s space. The plaza is covered by a dense tree’s network. This way, the basins are assimilated to emptiness and become “breaths” in the city’s network whereas the plaza is like a “room” with a view on the water’s surfaces.
Plaza
The dock’s floor is continuous under the trees and is squared by a thin irrigation network that receives the rain. Six embedded glades take place in the bunch of trees. They suggest sunny places were one can stop and sit alone or with a group. The continuous part of the tree’s network as left to traffic and is the transition between the axis coming from the city and the haven’s axis. The edges of the plaza are designed in continuity with the other docksides: the same coating with lampposts and benches.
Building
Implantation
In the tree’s network, the main building inserts itself in between the axis coming from the city and from the haven. It manages the transition between the city’s and the haven networks. It anchors itself to the city and soars up to the haven.
Program
Urban intersection, the main building is a also point of socio-cultural connexions. We also found it interesting to offer the opportunity to occupy this amazing place at every hour of the day. The program we suggest is that of an international house. It is an infrastructure supervised by the city composed of short, medium and long term housing units (one night up to six months) for students, lecturers, artists etc…, of various gathering places (meetings, shows, seminars, courses, restaurant,…) that can be used by the residents or by exteriors. This program inscribes itself in the cultural effervescence of the city Antwerpen.
Issues
The building is inserted in the interval between the South buildings and the North bridge. It must thus be permeable on the ground floor and be extremely thin. That allows us to work on spaces with views on both the building’s sides and leads us to condense the traffic networks in the building. Moreover, the variety of the people using the building leads to a thought on organization and expression of private, shared and public spaces.
Organization
Distribution of the activitiesThe building is composed of a “head” anchored to the city in which we find the international house’s public activities: the reception, the administration, the ballroom, the big room; of a “body” assigned to the housing units (144 units) and of an extremity opening towards the haven in which we find, a secondary entrance, nice sitting-rooms, meeting rooms and a restaurant.The ground floor, composed of small shops, guarantees the transition between the city’s and the haven’s axis thanks to large passages through which the plaza’s floor runs. The multiplication of public grounds ends above the city’s rooftops, with a sundeck with a long show room and its hall.
Traffics
The public and the resident’s vertical traffics take place through the two cores. They fuel every floor’s extremity and the three building body’s walkways. Each walkway leads to three floors of housing units of different type.
Typology
Let’s visit a housing module (16meters long, 11meters wide). The walkway leads to a space from were we can enter two rooms (37,5m2 each), a staircase goes up reaching two studios (55m2 each), and an other staircase bring us down to the entrance of a common room and its 4 rooms (27,5m2 each).
Structure
The building is composed of a concrete hart made of a succession of columns in which the technical elements run trough, it anchors the building to the city. They support the floorings which suggest a move towards the haven. The North extremity’s sitting rooms take place on 3m high concrete cantilever walls containing the meeting rooms, liberating thus a 180° sigh. The building is modulated by the concrete walls on which the façade is hanged.
Façade
The façade is given rhythm by the housing modules showed by a steel frame. In each module, the spaces express themselves behind the glass by there various depths. In order to keep the rooms connexion with the exterior as well as giving them enough privacy, and regulating the light, revolving shutters and a wire netting balustrade take place in front of the private spaces.Seen from far away, the balustrades seem to be running along the façade and the shutters give it different textures depending on the wideness of there opening in accordance with the hours of the day and the seasons. The whole façade talks about the intense and diverse activity going on inside the building.
As a conclusion we will refer to the questions that lead us during this project:
To inscribe architecture in place, space, time and society,
To structure spaces with enough suppleness for various destinations and interpretations
To build spaces that evolve as days, seasons and years pass by
No Responses Yet to “thesis06/07”