ARCHITECTUURGIDS.NL / ARCHITECTUREGUIDE.NL

NETHERLANDS ARCHITECTURE INSTITUTE

J.M.J. COENEN, 1988-1993, Museumpark 25, Rotterdam

ARCHITECT(URAL OFFICE):
Jo Coenen

ARTIST:
Peter Struycken
Auke de Vries
Lebbeus Woods

ARCHITECT(URAL OFFICE):
Jo Coenen & Co.

:
Jo Coenen & Co.

BUILDING TYPE:
Museums and exhibition buildings

STATE:
Jo Coenen & Co. (ren. 2011)


RELATED BUILDINGS:
Private House Sonneveld

Getting the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in place was a tough proposition indeed. After a veritable inter-city war, Rotterdam was selected as the venue for a joint venture between three Amsterdam bodies: the Dutch Documentation Centre for Architecture, the Architecture Museum Foundation and Stichting Wonen. The actual construction proceeded just as laboriously, once Jo Coenen had emerged as the surprising victor of a 1988 limited competition involving six architects with Rem Koolhaas heavily tipped to win. Coenen's design houses the institute's key functions - archives, exhibitions and staff - in three distinct volumes. Each volume has its own architectural character and relationship with the surroundings. The elongated archives building follows the curve of Rochussenstraat, screening off https://www.architectureguide.nl/project/item/prj_id/240" class="inline_link">Museum Park from the rest of the city. It stands on concrete piers in a colonnade so that the park can be visually engaged through it. In the evening the colonnade plays host to Peter Struycken's spectacular light work. A café occupies one tip of the 'banana'. The exhibition block is a square concrete volume clad in brick. Besides the tall main exhibition space it contains two smaller rooms, a gallery and a Balcony Room. Exhibitions can also be held in the Upper or Attic Room between the six storey-high concrete joists; the floors there are of steel gratings through which daylight passes from the transparent roof down to the main exhibition space below. The tall central glass box contains offices and a library connected to the study areas in the archive block by a footbridge. The structure of this component consists of steel columns on the exterior of the envelope that meet above the glass box in a steel 'pergola'. The central entrance lobby and foyer are situated in the enclosed two-storey basement of this box, giving access to the glazed auditorium overlooking the ornamental lake. The entrance lobby was reached from the colonnade, and also from Museum Park over a slender wooden footbridge across the lake. The sculpture in the water is by Auke de Vries. In 2004 ‘The Hermitage’, a zinc and steel installation by Lebbeus Woods, was mounted on the north-east corner of the archives building.
In 2011 the building was renovated by Jo Coenen & Co. and given a new entrance area with restaurant and Doedek for children. OMA designed the new permanent exhibition, de schatkamer (treasury).