After the devastating fireplace bombs of the Germans strategy during the first stages of World Warfare II, Rotterdam's centre was damaged, together with a great many other older buildings of the city. The recovery of the Rotterdam's centre shown a great problem to architects of building a city from the start. Rotterdam was then a post World Conflict II bare canvas which offered birth for some of the upcoming architects of that time period. One of these was Rem Koolhaas, who four years following the destruction had the chance to design one of the ethnical museums in the centre of Rotterdam. Kunsthal museum was built in an effort to encourage tourism in Rotterdam's cultural capital. The Kunsthal museum was design and built as a way to get global attention for the architecture of the building to be able to put Rotterdam on the European Cultural stage.
Rem Koolhaas is a Dutch architect that was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He started his job as a writer and he proved helpful as a journalist for the Haagse Post and as a film screenplay writer. In 1968 he moved to London to study Structures at the Architectural Relationship College. By 1972 a scholarship or grant, that he was awarded with gave him the oppotunity to stay in america where he began his examination of the impact of the metropolitan culture on structures. He composed 'Delirious New York', that was publicized in 1978 and he detailed it as a 'retroactive manifesto for Manhattan'. ( eneshi reference point?)
At that point Rem Koolhaas came back to Europe in order to step forward from theory to apply and in 1975 he founded OMA (Office of Metropolitan Structures) in London with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Within the first 10 years OMA's designs were theoretical; these were only captured in writing but never build. The motives of OMA were to define new types of connections between structures and contemporary cultural situation, both in theory and in practice. OMA's jobs like the Educatorium in Utrecht, the Seattle Community Collection and the Kunsthal Museum are certainly revealing those targets.
Rem Koolhaas was mainly inspired by the early modernism of Destijl and the Russian Constructivists and his try out was to reinvent all of the the modern movements prior to the establishment of the Rationalist cannon. Within the 1980's he transformed towards more sensible projects like housing programmes, a few of them being a residential building job in Rotterdam (1980 - 1982) and open public cover in Amsterdam (1983). By 1987 Rem Koolhaas had the commission to create the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands that was the first large task by OMA to be built.
Kunsthal Museum is situated in Rotterdam, Netherlands and is between the city's Museum Park and the occupied highway Maasboulevard building a division to the website which Koolhaas used to form architectural design appropriately. The building is made up of three large exhibition halls (3300 square meters) on three different levels you can use jointly or independently, two gallery places, a design gallery and a photo-gallery, a sizable auditorium, a bookshop, a VIP room and an individually accessible restaurant - cafe.
The museum isn't just an exhibition building but also functions as a traffic intersection as well. The southern facade of the building faces the primary artery of the city, a occupied highway which is made together with a dyke and is connected through the building with the north part where in fact the museum park occurs. Within the perimeter of the museum playground there are located 4 other museums included in this the Netherlands Structures Institute and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Rem Koolhaas is using the encompassing features of the site to contrasts the two attributes of the building, the peaceful, green area and the active and noisy highway, and uses Kunsthal museum as a 'bridge' that links the metropolitan and the natural panoramas.
The main idea behind the building's design was that of an square crossed by two routes. One particular routes is a open public pedestrian ramp linking the north and south edges of the museum and a street, parallel to the highway, operating east - west. Those routes would separate the square into four autonomous parts that would be became a member of by an axis of movement. The task for Rem Koolhaas and his associates was to create a museum- building as four different, autonomous jobs, a feature that can be used before in the Seattle City Collection (2004) where Koolhaas designed the building as a number of different parts connected by the spiral path.
From that problem the idea of the building was a continuing circuit through the areas. The concept idea was attained by the utilization of ramps running through the interior, hooking up different levels and divides the useful areas. The ramps are linking the interior areas on different levels but at the same time the ground slopes and ramps are traversing the composition as the several parts of the building are piled on top of each other. Blood circulation is an important aspect of Rem Koolhaas architecture so that as he stated: "The movements changes the architecture. "
Appendix: 1 Sections of the building exhibiting the ground slopes created by the ramps.
One of the ramps that divides the framework is the public, pedestrian ramp that runs from the highway level of the north facade to the gain access to road at the lower degree of the museum playground. A glass wall structure separates the public path from the interior exhibition space that creates a link between interior - external surfaces spaces.
Another passing through the Kunsthal
Museum can be an access road that works Appendix: 2 Exterior public ramp - goblet wall
beneath the building.
A second; interior ramp works parallel but reversed and crosses the pedestrian ramp. The access of the museum is identified when the two ramps meet.
The interior ramp at the entry of the building causes the bottom level in to the Exhibition Hall One that encounters out to the museum park. Rem Koolhaas used tree columns spread on the inside to make reference to the surface view. By the end of Hall one a ramp causes Hall two that faces out to the urban landscaping. Through Hall two a way leads either back to the entry or leads up an alternative ramp to a roofing garden but halfway up the visitor encounters Hall three.
This sophisticated spatial circulation creates a unique experience through areas with the use of different contemporary light systems and materials for every single of the pathways, ramps and places through the museum. Koolhaas is also using this technique to be able to separate the private and general public areas but also to create a unique marriage between interior and external.
Appendix: 3 Light systems through areas Appendix: 4 Roof Lighting systems
Circulation is the primary idea behind Kunsthal museum and since Rem Koolhaas stated for the MOMA growth task: ''. . . It really is evident that blood flow is why is or breaks open public architecture. ''
In the Kunsthal museum ramps are used as connectors but also are used to move the viewer from one space (gallery) to the next in order to see the trip between areas. Rem Koolhaas try to contain in Kunsthal, but also in a few other assignments, a complicated spiral shape - movement within the square which refers back to Wright's Guggenheim Museum with the circular blood flow, the unbuilt ' unlimited museum' task by Le Corbusier and the pinwheel plan of early villas by Mies Truck Der Rohe.
Rem Koolhaas has used the spiral blood flow within a rectangular volume in several tasks like the 1989 design for the People from france National Library in Paris. A lot of Kunsthal design elements were found in the famous Seattle city library 10 years later, like the use of ramped spiral circulation, diverting public routes through the building, translucency and transparency.
In order to make a compare between interior and external places but also private and general public areas, Rem Koolhaas used a various collection of contrasting materials, cheap and expensive, chic and banal. The use of inexpensive, everyday materials is another component of Rem Koolhaas architecture that is contained in Kunsthal Museum. The architect stated that: "Architecture is always the come across of perspective and scenario. The Dutch don't believe in spending a lot of money on structures so there is no choice but to build with really cheap materials. "
He created a collage of materials, with Miesian appearance, on the exterior of the building which displays the Mies Vehicle der Rohe's Country wide Gallery in Berlin but in a deconstructed adaptation marked with modern day elements and a distinction of fine marble and wine glass with raw materials.
For Kunsthal museum Koolhaas used a assortment of different materials like steel, glass, rock cladding, concrete, translucent corrugated flat iron linens and plywood. This differentiation of materials had therefore the fragmentation of the facades and each side of the building is totally different. The architect used heavy, sturdy materials where the interior spaces needed to be held private and the use of glass offered a sense of openness and a link between exterior-interior. With the use of wine glass he also achieved to open the surface facades in order showing to the general public the interior places without presenting a clear image of what's really occurring behind the wall surfaces.
Appendix: 5 East Facade of the museum Appendix: 6 North - Western world Facades of the museum
The intricacy and uniqueness of the building but also the describing that Rem Koolhaas put into the Kunsthal museum is disclosed not only through the exterior and interior detailed architecture but also through the framework of the building. Kunsthal museum, unlike the majority of the structures, especially that time, embraces many choices that create a assorted spatial experience that produce the concept and the building itself, better. The look of the composition for Kunsthal discloses the partnership between architectural intent, rationality and composition.
Many elements were inserted in the structural system to be able to make a unique structural system in each area of the building. There's a distortion of the structural grid and it is visible in the inside, in each hall the columns were positioned diagonal in plan.
Appendix: 7 Architectural and structural ideas of the museum.
In Hall one there are two rows of columns slipping past the other person but in Hall two there's a complete free course space. The Auditorium in addition has another type of structural system with slanted columns and the pedestrian's ramps- way has been designed as a double cantilever with columns operating across, diagonal in plan.
The irrational structural system that is employed in Kunsthal museum is subjected externally of the museum at the key entrance, leaving a tastes of what's to come on the inside for visitors. Next to the entrance there are four different columns very shut to each, one H - column, one reinforced cement column, one castellated and one cylindrical column.
The unique structural systems found in the Kunsthal, the cheap exposed materials, the fragmentation of the facades by different materials, the use of a sophisticated circulation, the intensive detailing throughout the building but also some useful problems that came up to the top after the starting of the museum in 1992, set Kunsthal as the pace for a number of criticism about Rem Koolhaas and his structures.
Rem Koolhaas explained at one of is own interviews for his publication S. M. L. XL that: 'I was also enthusiastic about displaying the implications of inability - displaying both the
calculations and the miscalculations of assignments. ' Kunsthal museum is a superb example of many architectural elements that Koolhaas composed about and used at a lot of his later tasks, but some 'failures' was within a few of the detailing of the building after the opening in 1992.
Problems associated with the building were indicated by a lot of its visitors. A number of the comments created by the visitors explained that the entry of the building had not been exactly evident so down the road a lamps arrow indicating the door was placed beyond your access. Other problems associated to the building were a few of the slim corridors and metal grid flooring found in one of the exhibition halls that induced several drawbacks to the function of the building and created a great deal of criticism for the structures of the museum.
Appendix: 8 Entrance of the museum
Conclusion
Alli mia paragraph g tin simantikotita p ennan to bottom line se 2
Perhaps it is because Koolhaas is not wedded to anybody style that he discovers McArchitecture easy to process. Unlike the task of Peter Eisenman or Gehry, a Koolhaas building isn't easily identifiable. "In a few ways I consider a compliment, " says Koolhaas. "You work in so many conditions that it might be unnatural and unreal if your projects did not become completely different too. "
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http://architectuul. com/architect/rem-koolhaas
http://www. notablebiographies. com/news/Ge-La/Koolhaas-Rem. html
http://www. ribajournal. com/blog/comments/rotterdam_kunsthal/
