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Reversed Boogie Woogie

Part 2 Project 2013
Donna van Milligen Bielke
 Amsterdam University of the Arts Amsterdam | Netherlands
The city hall is the engine of Amsterdam. This is where decisions are made that determine the direction of the city’s development. A city hall should be a representative and functional building that enhances the city.

The city hall has a public function and is part of urban life. That’s why the building must be open and accessible. The addition of various functions such as the opera, metro station and a market and the position in the historical centre should contribute to this.

This graduation project reacts to the existing ‘Stopera’, which houses the city hall and opera at Waterlooplein in Amsterdam. A building that wants to be public but doesn’t achieve it. It will never be a real public building owing to its composition of separate elements and a passage that doesn’t connect anything. Some people are even annoyed by the building.

The starting point for this graduation project is the recognition of the scale of this big, hybrid building. Rather than obscuring its dimensions, the project instead enlarges its size: a big volume, hermetic at first glance, classically proportioned. In urban design terms, the building has sharp boundaries so that it’s recognizable from outside and exudes a certain representative quality.

The building connects with surrounding streets, alleys and quays. The volume is hollowed out from these openings. Surrounding routes extend through the building along a sequence of spaces. The building becomes the support structure for a new public space that provides access to various functions.

The public route is composed of outdoor spaces (squares), semi-outdoor spaces in the form of colonnades or forecourts, and interior spaces (in-between spaces). The alternation of different climate conditions blurs the boundary between inside and outside at building level. The public space transitions into semi-public space, which then connects with the closed program. The relationship between window and blank wall gives the pedestrian simple but effective information about the public nature of the various functions.

A building-city or city-building, a project placed so precisely on the border between urbanism and architecture that one can no longer say which of the two it concerns.

Donna van Milligen Bielke
Tutor(s)
2013
Reversed Boogie Woogie, design for the Amsterdam City Hall.
The current City Hall, by architects Holzbauer and Dam,1986.
Reversed Boogie Woogie in its urban tissue, with the public intensity gradient. Light areas are public program. Dark areas are less public program.
Reversed Boogie Woogie seen from the curve of the river Amstel.
View of one of the Gates of the building. Seen from far through a connected street.
View of the building seen from up close.
The building is a large, representative solid building with sharp boundaries to its surroundings.
The public route, a sequence of spaces that connect the public route to the surrounding urban fabric. The boundaries at building level are soft and permeable.
The ground floor, with a public intensity gradient.
1. Section, the Waterloo square market and Opera 2. Section, the public route, with its gates, belvederes, squares, forecourts and in-between spaces. 3. Section on the City Hall.
1. Program of the City Hall. 2. Program of the Opera. 3. Public intensity gradient of the ground floor 4. Daylight intensity on the public route.
The squares that give access to the different functions of the program.
The forecourts. Forecourts are connected to the squares and give access to or insight in to the adjacent parts of the program.
The in-between spaces, In-between spaces are materialized as interior spaces, in order to blur the borders between indoor and external spaces on the public route.
A view on the public route, a collection of outdoor spaces (squares), semi-outdoor spaces (forecourts) and interior spaces (in-between spaces). A building-city or city-building, a project placed so precisely on the border between urbanism and architectu
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