Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop
22/01/2019.
[Bunnik - Utrecht] The Netherlands
metalocus, ÁNGEL TORNE
metalocus, ÁNGEL TORNE
Museum Fort Vechten focuses on the history of the UNESCO-listed 19th c. New Dutch Water Line, and is built within one of the fortresses and was completed in October 2015.
The defence mechanism lay in intentionally flooding land during times of war. As one of its key elements a 50-meter-long maquette in the courtyard, and as part of the architecture, can be flooded to demonstrate that system.
The defence mechanism lay in intentionally flooding land during times of war. As one of its key elements a 50-meter-long maquette in the courtyard, and as part of the architecture, can be flooded to demonstrate that system.
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Ossip
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Ossip
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Ossip
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Bas Princen
Roof floor plan. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop.
Ground floor plan. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop.
Section. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop.
Horizontal detailed section. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop.
Vertical detailed section. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop.
Pigmented gypsum model, scale 1:10. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Anne Holtrop
Pigmented gypsum model, scale 1:10. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Anne Holtrop
Competition model, scale 1:200. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Anne Holtrop
Construction. Fort Vechten Museum new pavilion by Studio Anne Holtrop. Photograph by Anne Holtrop
Fort Vechten is situated in a strategic military location favoured since Roman times and the second largest of 48 fortresses that were erected along the New Dutch Waterline, a military barrier that started to go up back in the 19th century. A ring structure that could be flooded to protect western Holland from potential invaders. This ingenious system formed by dykes, locks, and canals, it could protect cities along the country’s border enabled the knee-deep flooding of an 85 kilometre long, 3 to 5-kilometre-wide strip of land.
There has been recent renewed interest in this defensive line, and this strategic capacity is directly addressed by the most spectacular part of the museum designed by Studio Anne Holtrop: a 50-meter-long model set in the open air and showing visitors the system of sluices that made it possible to defend the area with water as weapon.
The museum’s new pavilion embraces the model in an organic geometry courtyard, a buried piece whose contrast with the rigidity of the old bastion located behind it. The heavy materiality, defined by the use of reinforced concrete with raw finishes, give rise to a complex which comes across as a topography intergrated into the environment, whose interior spaces are impossible to guess at from outside.
There has been recent renewed interest in this defensive line, and this strategic capacity is directly addressed by the most spectacular part of the museum designed by Studio Anne Holtrop: a 50-meter-long model set in the open air and showing visitors the system of sluices that made it possible to defend the area with water as weapon.
The museum’s new pavilion embraces the model in an organic geometry courtyard, a buried piece whose contrast with the rigidity of the old bastion located behind it. The heavy materiality, defined by the use of reinforced concrete with raw finishes, give rise to a complex which comes across as a topography intergrated into the environment, whose interior spaces are impossible to guess at from outside.
Description of project by Giovanna Borasi
The building does not really have a front, you enter through the existing building of the fortifications. The route through a shadowy, dark space leads us precisely to that thin line between land and water, into the territory that the Netherlands has wrested from the sea. As if Holtrop had the ability to transform a given programme not into a space that contains the function, but into the space itself, a solidified atmosphere in which we can steep ourselves. There is not a lot of architecture that succeeds in being content in its own right without being a direct realisation of the programme. I do not mean by this that the architecture is simply a large, inhabitable work of sculpture, quite the contrary. This is precisely where its magic lies: the plan, the form of the building, the materials and the way they are utilised support by themselves the raison d’être of the building and become its content.
The context takes on a generating role, but the context we are talking about is in fact the reflection of an attentive and sensitive interpretation of a range of physical elements. As if he was carrying out a ‘post as-found’ operation, a careful analysis of the context and a precise selection of what to exploit in order to turn it into something else. Holtrop works in a territory that is in balance between what he finds in a form and a material that seemingly do not yet have any relationship with the world of architecture. An approach that professes not to bring an invention, evoking an image that apparently already exists but, drawn from elsewhere, does not produce an obvious architecture. Inside the building can be seen as a sort of designed landscape in which we can wander around, slowly exploring its routes. But a landscape is not confined to what can be discovered at ground level and by moving through it. Its sense, its true shape, can be grasped if viewed from a distance, or from above. This possibility is given to us by a route over the roof of the museum. It is here that a more complex figure, or perhaps the real figure that he has imagined and designed, will appear to us.
The building is made from one material: this approach, which on the one hand further strengthens the sensation of being inside a large model, ensures that the continuity attained in the plan is maintained in three dimensions. The selection of an earth-coloured concrete suggests to visitors that they are in space that has been constructed inside the land. Crucially, all the concrete elements were poured on site. Since the museum is situated on a site marked also as an archaeological monument it was impossible to use foundations and lays as one piece flat on the ground. The up to 70 meters long concrete walls span without any dilatations and are made with individually curved moulds due to the drawing appropriated from the landscape. Finding solutions to these restrictions, some related to his practice, some to local circumstances, is the driving force. Building what is in essence a drawing, pushes the consequences of making as an act to a rather extreme height. The resulting building might look self-evident but the fact that nothing goes against the initial shape of the drawing, did have a tremendous consequences for the production proces.
More information
Architects
Studio Anne Holtrop
Project Team
Arjen Aarnoudse, Francesco Apostoli, Samuel Jaubert De Beaujeu, Gabriel Cuéllar, Sophia Holst, Sebastian Hürni, Dora Loncaric, Sander Manse, Akira Negishi, Shumoei Nitatori, Ryuta Sakaki, Remco Siebring, Esther Vonwil, Stijn de Weerd, Roderik Van Der Weijden
Collaborators
Fort masterplan.- Penne Hangelbroek, Jonathan Penne Architecten; Christian Rapp, Rapp & Rapp; Adriaan Geuze, West 8. Structural engineer.- Jeroen Luttmer, Corsmit. Environmental consultants.- Hans Besslink and Geert Filippini, Royal Haskoning. Concrete consultant.- Henk Oudekempers.
Client
Peter Kuypers, Provincie Utrecht
Builder
Heijmans Civiel
Area
Total area.- 2.000 m²
Usable floor area.- 170.000 m²
Cost Coste
€/m² 3,250
ANNE HOLTROP
Anne Holtrop (b. 1977, Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam and graduated with distinction from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in 2005. He started his own architectural practice in 2009. Currently, the studios are based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Muharraq, Bahrain. In 2015, the first two major buildings designed by the Studio, Museum Fort Vechten and the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain, were completed.
For his work he received several grants from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. In 2016, he was awarded the Iakov Chernikhov International Prize, in 2008 he was awarded the Charlotte Köhler Prize for Architecture by the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation. Besides his work as an architect, he is an editor of the independent architectural journal OASE, visiting lecturer and external critic at various art and architecture academies and founder of INSIDE.
The Studio is currently working on new stores worldwide for Maison Margiela with the first one due to open on Bruton Street, London this year; an exhibition pavilion for CERN in France, and several UNESCO-listed heritage buildings in Bahrain: Murad Boutique Hotel, Siyadi Pearl Museum and the Qaysariya Suq.
For his work he received several grants from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. In 2016, he was awarded the Iakov Chernikhov International Prize, in 2008 he was awarded the Charlotte Köhler Prize for Architecture by the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation. Besides his work as an architect, he is an editor of the independent architectural journal OASE, visiting lecturer and external critic at various art and architecture academies and founder of INSIDE.
The Studio is currently working on new stores worldwide for Maison Margiela with the first one due to open on Bruton Street, London this year; an exhibition pavilion for CERN in France, and several UNESCO-listed heritage buildings in Bahrain: Murad Boutique Hotel, Siyadi Pearl Museum and the Qaysariya Suq.
