Amalgam
how do you like the temporary location?
“...to be honest I like it very much here.. I guess TU Delft invested lot of money and energy to make us happy here....it’s also nice to be so close by the city center; also to the TU library, the station. The only thing I still have to get used are these dead end corridors...you get lost very easily here....”
what do you miss from the former building?
“...well, I think everyone liked that building, the enormous corridor that we had led us have easy contact with all other students, exhibitions...it was very easy to get input and exchange opinions and we don’t have that in this building...we don’t have that much interaction...”
Nine out of ten students, teachers, researchers, staff or simply visitors would come up with a similar answer.
Why would it be better to build in the old location a new building than in the existing location reuse and extend the old building?
The temporary building of the Faculty of Architecture is located on the front side of the TU Delft Campus. Its singular position, between the old city and the University make of this building the perfect place as it would work as an example for the whole campus.
Half way is already done. The inversion can be considerably lower if we reuse what inevitably had to be renewed.
Amalgam
The existing building has aproximately 25.000 m2, less than half of the surface needed for the new faculty.
We propose a new building that complete the required surface, reducing therefore by two the building costs. This new volume doesn’t parasite the exisiting one. It positions itself in the voids left. It is extremely careful.
Old and new fulfill each other: the exisitng one give the presence of the ensamble while the new one stays back, quiet. It does not need to shout. Its claim is the flexibility that it is giving to the old one.
Structure and program
Avoiding deorientation and dead ends is the key to enhance the existing building. Therefore the program is clearly organized by three rows:
-studios are place on the transversal wings
-offices are located between the studios encouraging more contact between students, staff and teachers
-public functions are organized along the “street”
The street
The new street is understood as a back bone that connects and distributes people. All the common functions are located facing this zone: lecture halls, exhibition space, model rooms, restaurant, bookshop, etc.
The interaction obtained by this action is essential in a faculty of architecture, where learning from other projects, showing exhibitions, provoking relation between bachellor and masters has a crucial role
Patios
Introducing a new volume on an existing site brings density that has to be carefully organized.
Our goal with the new structure was to bring light to all dependencies by organizing them around patios. The studio rooms and offices, the most frecuently used spaces, are placed arond the big patios and common uses as lecture halls or model rooms around the smaller ones