The project for the new RACM/CEC Institute constitutes an extraordinary example of a permeable building that promises to become an enclave of enormous scenic and social value along the edge of the historic town center of Amersfoort.
The Meursingterrein’s situation between Amersfoort’s historic town center and the railway causes one to think about the scale and character of the building in its dialogue with the old town edge, the Eem, and the Koppelpoort. Of especial delicacy is the interaction of the new building with the Zocherplantsoen park and the open public space in the city, as well as the character of the covered public plaza—both inside and outside the building—from which one can access all the Knowledge Institute’s principal parts. The body of the building is wrapped in a broken, crystalline skin, a belt of glass that orients itself spatially in many different directions and inclinations in order to capture the light that, in turn, highlights and fragments the reflective planes, thus endowing, through the play of changing daylight on its facets, the urban landscape with an animated, scintillating backdrop. Jacob van Ruysdael’s painting, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields, of 1670-1675, served as an inspiration. Conceptually, we synthesized the inclined planes of the houses’ roofs with the clouds that, from the sky, so attractively animate the landscape. Another extraordinarily inspiring image is that of Christaens Zmicker’s painting, View of Amsterdam from the Air (a precocious point-of-view for its time), a bird’s-eye view in which the play of light and shadow supplant and fragment the urban continuity with a dynamic, atmospheric shading of passing clouds.
The use of glass as the façade material—transparent and opaque in red and silver-gray, with horizontal silk-screened glass panels as brises-soleil—also offers sufficiently diverse technical possibilities (for example, a ventilated, double façade, low-emission glass, etched or silk-screened, layered, patterned panes, et cetera) for solar control and degrees of transparency, guaranteeing an adequate interior climate, especially in the building’s high-ceilinged common spaces.
Behind this inclined plane the Knowledge Institute’s entire program is elaborated on five main levels and a mezzanine. The new building’s entry plaza is a covered court, sheltered by the inclined glass wall and an horizontal canopy that, as the prolongation of the façade’s sloping plane, deepens the covered area, bringing it to the edge of a great reflecting pool. This canopy assures the intimacy of scale necessary in the new building’s proximity to the Koppelpoort. The reflecting pool’s form and location allude to the continuation of the old canal branch that, from the Koppelpoort, constituted the ring that once encircled the town to the West and South. In this way a fragment of urban memory is recuperated, and coupled with the reflections on and off the building, enriching the place considerably through scenic experience. One can observe how the reflecting pool’s geometry also resolves the dynamic tensions generated by the proximity of other buildings, like the Gasthuis, that is aligned with one side of the water’s trapezoidal pool, insinuating a subtle dialogue between the new plaza and the existing edification, or how the Knowledge Institute’s façade’s breaks govern an accord with the REMU, Van Berkel’s transformer station.
In the evening, the building will glow through its prismatic façade, revealing the public life of its interior, while gently illuminating the park’s pathways and orienting those who approach or pass through Amersfoort through the Spui, the Smallepad , the pedestrian bridge over the Eem at the Koppelpoort.
The future underpass at the Eem will be realized after the Institute’s construction; therefore, The building’s design process assumes an integrates the redefinition of the pedestrian and bicycle traffic over the canal and its relation to the CEC and the Institute’s plaza. At the other end of the building, at the Smallepad, a circle is situated in order to keep vehicular traffic from entering the park, that is planned to have only restricted circulation in the future.
One enters the Institute from the covered plaza, which acts as both the building’s first point of public reception and as a public place attractive enough in itself for the enjoyment of any citizen of Amersfoort, with a long, continuous stone bench along the edge of the reflecting pool.
The main exterior entrances to the Institute are obliquely staggered in response to the many tangential approaches to the building. The building’s structure and general disposition are layered in two strata, enveloped together in a crystalline wrap.
The interior is inspired by the Crossing and nave of the St. Odulphuskerk, Assendelft, from the right side of the choir, 1649, by Pieter Saenredam, where the two strata refer, one, to an overarching superstructure corresponding to the columns, and the other, to a more intimate scale corresponding to the wooden constructions. The interior structure and the greater part of the finishes are in wood on the upper floors, corresponding to offices and laboratories, making manifest this public-private duality. The rafters supporting the inclined double-glass surface are enveloped in wood, bringing warmth to the interior experience as well as an abstract memory of traditional methods of construction.
The entire building’s selection of construction and finishing materials establish a surprising harmony of new and traditional elements, forming great textures that extend throughout, endowing the entirety with a unified overall character. Thus the reason for floors in red brick and wood, curtain-wall glass in faceted, colored planes, “the ceramic coat” inclined surfaces, concrete, et cetera. The material textures are set apart in independent, extensive bands to achieve a pure experience that is in itself free of the employed materials.
As already mentioned, the program of the Knowledge Institute is elaborated on five main levels and a mezzanine, with the ground and first levels devoted to functions most related to the public. At ground level, the café and restaurant are strategically situated near the Multipurpose Hall and the CEC Exhibition Hall, near the park. While general information, control and the big foyer are located in the central space of the building, in order to organize the entrance in the Multipurpose Auditoria, and the access to the upper levels.
The building’s one underground layer of parking provide space for cars and bicycles, more than sufficient for those who work at the Institute.
Escalators lead us from the plaza-lobby to the upper floors. On the first floor are located the public library, with its open and closed stacks, archives, bookstore, reading room for numerous seated visitors, and librarians’ offices with restricted access.
At the mezzanine are situated the building’s main internal functions—reproduction, data systems management, photography, special depots, and publishing department. The laboratories and the rest of the exhibition rooms of the CEC are located on the first floor.
On the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors are located the RdMz/ROB offices, in different possible permutations of distribution plans. The fifth floor provides a terrace for outdoor gatherings of the two departments, with breathtaking views of historic Amersfoort and the surrounding landscape.
- Juan Navarro Baldeweg
