In collaboration with:
Chair of History and Theory of Architecture, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, Matthew Critchley

“That pleasure is founded altogether upon our wonder, at seeing an object of one kind represent so well an object of a very different kind, and upon our admiration of the art which surmounts so happily that disparity which nature had established between them.”1

Inspired by the trans material metamorphoses and the question: Double the building or building the double? The focus of my project shifted from the building I was first looking at to its less noticeable neighbour.

How can one become the double of the other? To achieve the transformation, the building is wrapped in a new façade that creates a new layer in front. The old walls are still perceptible in the interior as a fragment of the building’s former self, dividing the private parts from the communal spaces of the flats. The private rooms stay inside, in the old chore of the building, while the communal spaces are located in the new layer. Through this so generated extension and enlargement, a higher density can be achieved as the number of flats per floor are doubled and the quality of the space is enhanced. Through the extension the two buildings, before visually divided by the staircase, come to touch each other and the former staircase windows are incorporated in the communal spaces of the flat.

The building, now transformed, is read as the double of its neighbour without becoming it’s exact copy. The height, the grid’s proportions and the angle of the façade are slightly different as well as the façade construction. The concrete of one is translated in the wood construction of the other. Trough the silver painting of the wood the two different materials are perceived as the same from afar and only at a closer look the different textures are reviled. While the outside of the building tries to mimic the concrete façade construction of its neighbour, the wooden construction is explicitly shown in the interior, creating a contrast between the old and the new.

1 Smith, Adam. “Of the Nature of That Imitation which Takes Place in what are Called the Imitative Arts.” The Early Writings of Adam Smith. Ed. J. Lindgren. New York: 1967, 146.