TRANSFIGURATION 02
trans·fig·u·ra·tion
noun
a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state : in this light the junk undergoes a transfiguration; it shines.
· ( the Transfiguration) Christ’s appearance in radiant glory to three of his disciples (Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:2-3, Luke 9:28-36).
ORIGIN late Middle English (with biblical reference): from Old French, or from Latin transfiguratio(n-), from the verb transfigurare (see transfigure ).
A space for architectural education should be…
A space for architectural education should be both economical and abundant, offering the most of spaces for the fairest of budgets, providing besides and above the required program as much as possible of apparently useless space to accommodate as much as possible apparently useless activities.
A space for architectural education should be both solid and volatile. Its construction should be solid enough to carry any dynamic load and to provide any spatial change, while its appearance should be volatile and dissolve into infinity.
A space for architectural education should be at once open, closed, narrow and wide, high and low, offering both insights and prospects in one single view. It should provide a range of individual spaces for withdrawal and contemplation, of collective places for exchanging words and thoughts and showing off, and of lots of spaces in-between, all in their own way appropriate to accommodate the education of the yet undeveloped mind of every type of architect.
A space for architectural education should be both historical and futuristic, projecting illustrious pasts and unknown futures into some sort of unstable present, because architectural education can’t be anything else but now.
A space for architectural education should be complex and contradictory, nothing should look as what it should be and nothing should be as what it should look. It should turn the inside out and the outside in until no one can tell anymore which is what and what was when. And it should be both subversive and familiar, because otherwise no one would get the point.
A space for architectural education should be unprogrammed, because a continuous and conscious (re-)programming should be an inextricable part of the curriculum. It should project theory into practice and practice into the surreal.
A space for architectural education should bare no signature, its architecture should be without properties and appear as a both common and specific incident in generic, infinite space.
On the basis of these considerations the project Transfiguration 02 proposes to rebuild the spatial structure of the former Bouwkunde building exactly on its original spot and then carefully wrap it in new, generic floors, creating a new and larger architectural volume around the rebuild original. The new volume fits smoothly in the original urban scheme by conforming its outlines to the original ground floor and height of the original building. The number of new, generic floors within the volume is deduced from the functional program (60.000 sqm.): six new floors are equally distributed along the height of the building. The height of each respective floor and its constructional solidity allow for any programmatical requirement, and/or one or even two extra floors or mezzanine’s, thus providing the new building with enough ‘elbow-room’ for future developments.
The spatial interference of the (newly built-) former structure and its new, generic extension, the at once simple and complex spatial constellation of interfering floors, spaces and images, structures the new architectural volume, providing it with many different places and spaces that should be able to meet most of the above mentioned considerations and perhaps a little more. Like a spatial ghost the structure of the former Bouwkunde building haunts this new space for architectural education, shining brightly through its transparent facades and triggering collective memories of students, architects and passers-by, while establishing the new architectural identity of Bouwkunde Delft.
(piëzoprints on paper, various dimensions)
