portfolio marten dashorst’s
about me.
m
y name is marten dashorst. I am 24 years old and for the moment living in rotterdam. I started studying architecture at delft University of Technology in 2001, receiving my Master’s degree, with distinction, in 2008. Over the years I have been able to learn a lot, both inside and outside my educational environments. Not only architecture has inspired me, but I have been equally inspired by music, graphic design and literature to observe the world around me with a keen eye. I believe architecture is at its best when it is able to combine a creative array of solutions in a simple and aesthetically provoking way. Architecture is
more than the image; it is economic, scientific, psychological and experience, all in one. Architecture is sustainable, just as our society and our cities are sustainable. It works both on a microscopical level as well as on a universal scale. Architecture has learnt me it is important to know a little about a lot. Our profession puts us in the center of our society, where opinions are multiple and, very often, hard pressed. Architecture still has the power to mediate between different groups in our society, whether it is the small, private client with his family, the museum with its artworks or the government and her policies. I have always tried to expand my horizon beyond my education as well. For a number of years, I was a member
Marten Sebastiaan Dashorst: Graaf Florisstraat 108b 3021 CM Rotterdam +31 (0)6 48 770 110 mdashorst at gmail dot com
languages dutch, fluent english, fluent german, fluent french, intermediate
Born december 6, 1983, Assen, the Netherlands
programs Autocad, Sketchup, Maya, Maxwell, Adobe Suite, MS Office, Final Cut
high school: Praedinius Gymnasium, Groningen (1995-1998) / Menso Altingh College, Hoogeveen (1998-2001)
extracurricular Board member DBSG Stylos, DUT Faculty of Architecture student union (2004-2005) editor Pantheon//, Stylos magazine (2004-2006) editor B_Nieuws, DUT Faculty of Architecture magazine (20072008) student assistent Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, department of Underground Space Construction (2005-2006)
University Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, graduated as Master of Science, with distinction (2001-2008) exchange program, Southern California Institute of Architecture (2006)
of a rowing club in Delft, where I managed to combine social activities with sportivities. I have also been an active member of Stylos, my faculty’s students union. I have been a council member in the board of 2004-2005, and editor of its architectural magazine, pantheon//, for two years. I have been a student assistent, first at the chair of Underground Space Technologies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, where I was charged with all promotional work, the library and general assistents’ work. For the past year and a half I have been editor in chief of B_Nieuws, our faculty’s independent newspaper, reporting on all important matters around and about the faculty and its occupants.
Right now I am publisher of prss-release, a ‘paper blog aggregator’, publishing a weekly selection of architecturerelated blog postings in a clean, easy to read pdf format. I have also been actively involved in EASA, the European Architecture Students’ Assembly, a Europe-wide network of architecture students that gather each year for two weeks of workshops, lectures, parties and interaction in one of the 42 European countries in the network. My other passions range from reading (fiction and non-fiction) to graphic design, and from travelling to music making. Now that I have graduated I have got a clear idea about what kind of archi-
National Contact for the Netherlands in the European Architecture Students Assembly, EASA (20052008) relevant work/internship autocad drawer, Oesterbaai Asbestos Engineers (2005) design intern, NL Architects, Amsterdam (2007) other interests music: together with two friends I form a DJ collective. publishing: I am one of the editors and publishers of PRSS-release, a ‘paper blog aggregator’. photography: pretty much like every other architecture student I occasionally attempt to put buildings on film. http://www.flickr.com/ users/2613-say-yeah
tecture I would like to create and learn from. I am looking for an architecture office that does not necessarily depend on a specific style, but that can draw its inspiration from as many sources as possible, whether it is architecture itself, process, context or culture. About the cover: a photo taken at a housing project in Queens, New York. It’s all about the name you put on things, and when you decide to name your housing project ‘bland houses’, how can you expect anybody to be proud of it? Architecture is - unfortunately(?) - just as much about presentation and perception as it is about context. I believe any good architecture manages to bring all those factors together, without putting one over the other.
u
rban design strategy for the Dutch ‘new town’ of Almere, improving its feeble infrastructural body through introduction of longer connections and by replacing the existing island structure with a linear structure, more fit for its size. Since Almere has been built on reclaimed land, there is a strong waterrelated infrastructure. This needs to be improved (1), together with urban densification (2) and downsizing and adaption of the very dominant road structure (3). The method I used is called the ‘rgbg’ method and has been developed at the TU Delft. It is based around the notion that the physical network of a city is comprised of for different layers: housing (red), nature (green), water (blue) and infrastructure (grey), hence the name ‘rgbg’. Each layer is developed separately, without any apparent influence of the other layers. after this stage,
the four layers are put together, so that the combined image will show the weaknesses and strenghts of the individual layers as well as the locations of possible stress in the over-all network. My project focused on the center of almere, almere-stad. Like most other parts of the city, the center is also an island of buildings surrounded by a sea of infrastructure. Next to that, it is also a quite abundant area of the city. Even though it is located in the center and there is a large volume of shops and offices, inhabitants still prefer to shop either closerby or in bigger cities like Amsterdam or Utrecht. The design provides a new role for the center, by channelling more traffic through it rather than around it, by densifying the area and at the same time diversifying its program. when: fall 2005, Bachelors where: DUT Faculty of Architecture whom: Peter de Bois
accessible
almere
subway
mountain
f
or my Bachelor graduation project I designed a hybridized metro station in Rotterdam, on Eendrachtsplein. The focus of my research was stereotypes and how to destroy them through recontextualization and recombination. Is it possible to remove a building or structure with a very apparent stereotypical use out of its characteristic environment and place it in a new one, thereby generating new typologies of use, looks and feel? It was this question that led me to the design of subway mountain, subway station and climbing wall. Located at the Eendrachtsplein in the center of Rotterdam, the structure operates both on an urban level as well as on a smaller, more humane physical level. by functioning as a new facade for the eendrachtsplein, the building completes the half finished feel of this square in the center of the city. its sculptural appearance works as a focal point for the area, thereby redefining the entry to the subway from a dark hole in the ground to a spectacular descent into a new world, and at the same time acting
as a new facade to the square. The typological research I conducted for this assignment led me to realize that environment is indeed important for the functioning of buildings. Just like the subway is defined as a dark place where one’d rather not be, the climbing wall is the typical highway lining structure, surrounded by parking lots because it is to far out of the city to be walked to. By bringing this essentially natural structure into the unnatural environment of the city, a certain tension will be created that will leave its mark on the city. After all, who hasn’t dreamt of climbing the walls of the city hall? when: fall 2005, Bachelors where: DUT Faculty of Architecture whom: Rajan Ritoe
topographie des terrors
i
s it possible to engage in conversation with a site that is so historically challenged it has been lying in ruins for more than sixty years? The proposal is a building for the Topographie des Terrors foundation in Berlin. This institution aims to conserve the memories of the lives destroyed by the NS-German government and its apparateses, most infamously the Gestapo and SD. The building is home to a museum remembering the purported horrors and an extensive research facility. The challenge in this design assignment was to design a building that is both able to address the horrors of the past and at the same time invoke future initiatives towards peace from its
visitors. I have attempted to accomplish this through a very rigid approach structurally, spatially and visually - that slowly decomposes itself as the visitors move more inwards. To visitors the building first appears a solid, monolith block dangerously hovering over the exposed remains of the former Gestapo headquarters. Lightwells that penetrate the upper structure provide lighting, albeit ‘unreachable’. Visitors are being confronted with history in its rawest form - plain ruins - first, before they ascend into the museum, and confrontation makes way for interpretation and consolation. The entire building is constructed around a grid of 3.60m by 3.60m. All functions, whether museum spaces, toi-
lets or research offices, are set up on this same grid; everything and everybody is treated the same. Horizontally, the building slowly dissolves from the front, where the museum spaces are situated, towards the back, where the research faciities are. when: spring 2006, Masters where: DUT Faculty of Architecture whom: Micha de Haas
The facade material of choice for the building is masonry, while the loadbearing structure is constructed in prefabricated concrete. I chose masonry for its abilities to add scale and tactility to the facade. Given the fact that the building is essentially a large, monolithic block, masonry - laid in a free pattern with extending bricks to add more depth - is a very apt choice. It offers a similar degree of solidness from a distance, but once approached to within arm’s reach, it shows a delicacy, yet it never gives away its inner workings. The brown masonry I chose offer a degree of solemnness that is, I believe, adequate for the building it wraps.
china cine città
d
uring my semester at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles (2006) my main design project was a proposal for a film studio in an industrial enclave in western Beijing, China. Shooting a film is an difficult thing when it comes to privacy and exclusion from the real world. We’d rather keep the ‘reel’ of the movies separated from the real of the world we are making a film about. It is this physical separation that results in autonomous enclaves within the city, where you can only get in with a pass and an appropiate id. Taking the movie studio out of its exclusive surroundings and bringing it into the real world could generate a whole new way of looking at both film and the city. Using the city not only as a visual element in the final product, but also as a programmatic part of the process of filmmaking, offers the possibility of redefining the art of filming of and living in the city. What better place to experiment with new concepts of visual urbanism
than China? The cities of China are being built, destroyed and rebuilt at a pace only cinema could understand. And although the results are often disputable, what is certain is that cities like Beijing or Shanghai are undergoing a transformation that leaves their old urban fabric torn and indistinghuisable. The project - yr studio is a city - looks both at contemporary China as well as at old, pre-capitalist China. The intricate structure of the hutongs, the old housing neighbourhoods, are adapted for modern times. their visually entangling physique is reconstructed, not only graphically, but also programmatically. The city becomes a place where fi lming is no longer a separate, disjoint operation but something that will be as common as walking or eating your dog. when: fall 2006 where: Southern California Institute of Architecture whom: Robert Mangurian & Mary-Anne Ray
The result is a city-like environment that doubles as a film studio. Why would you shoot your films in a separated world, mimicking real life, while there is an entire real world at your disposal, over, under, next to your film facilities? The filmic qualities of the Chinese city have been an important inspiration in the project; the moongate, long, orchestrated views and the notion of Feng Shui’s impact on the environment of Chinese cities are all part of the design.
fear(less)
m
y Master’s degree diploma focused on the increased influence of fear in the public and private spaces of the modern (western) city. Global market capitalism and fear for the influence of exterior powers such as terrorism has lead to a new movement in defining our cities, both on an organizational as well as on a spatial level. Governments reorganize their operational structures to resembles big multinational companies more and more now; responsibilities are outsourced, and the civilian is seen more as a customer that has specific needs that need to be forfilled, that a critical element that both produces and consumes the city we live in. The result is an increase in the privatization of our cities. Public space is more and more regulated according to a wide array of rules and compliances, while initiative and surprise are slowly
being banned from our city centers. I believe it is the architects’ role to challenge not only the status quo, but also to be on the lookout for future developments that might change our environments for the worse, instead of for the better. The building I have designed to test and implement these statements is a metro station at Liverpool Street in London. I chose the program of a metro station for various reasons. It is one of the few spaces in our cities that is still both public and private in its uses and aesthetics. It is both a circulation and an occupational space. Finally, the fact that it is largely situated underground, makes it a perfect test for more basic elements of a good architectural proposal such as spatiality, orientation and light. Most of the existing metro station is located in an old block just opposite of the main entrance to Liverpool Street Station. Its continuous expansion over the years has led to an incomprehen-
sible layout, where it is easy to get lost while underground. The two lines that meet at the station - one subsurface at -5m and one deep line at -16m - have been made accessible in two different ways. The ground plane is essentially extended to the subsurface line through a building-wide staircase, while the deep line is accentuated vertically through a number of escalators that revolve around a shaft bringing in daylight onto the lower levels. The building was designed from the section instead of from the plan. Since the program initially only asked for a metro station, the design of the extra space was essential; both to test my thesis and in aiding the usability of the building. What resulted is I believe a building that offers the choice of public and private, without defining too many aspects of the usage and occupation of its spaces. A building where fear is an option, but never a result.
when: September 2007-October 2008 where: DUT Faculty of Architecture whom: Leontine de Wit, Elise van Dooren, Isabelle Doucet
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Seven steps towards a new building: 1) the original building. 2) gets demolished. 3) a literal tabula rasa. 4) lifts up to expose the underground. 5.) the original building envelop is rebuilt. 6) constructing somewhat of the classic station hall. 7) but with light wells.
gl + 10200
gl + 4080
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 8000 gl - 9690
gl - 12000
gl - 16000 section dd’ 1:100
The transition from inside to outside and vice versa is one of the recurring themes in the design. Metro travel normally invokes a feeling of confusion and disconnection from the city around us. We enter the underground somewhere, and more often than not, emerge somewhere completely different. This sudden change is often enhanced by the problematic layout of a metro station. The street facade, functioning as a continuous wall much like the ones we are familiar with in the city, opens up at certain points, allowing peeks into the building. When one enters, he does so through an outside-inside-outside sequence, where the station hall functions as another outside again; the metro station in the open air. The other approach - from metro to city - is similarly diffused and broken up in more imaginable elements through the use of light and spaces. Instead of a
small tunnel suddenly opening up into a spacious platform, the transition is more smooth and gradual. The station hall is designed as a continuous ground plane, where the boundary between under- and overground is hardly discernable. From the moment of entering the station the destination the platform - is already visible. Indeed, often metro stations are abundant in spaces. The problem however, is that these spaces often lack a clear function. I have solved this by designating all spaces both as circulation and occupational spaces. The roof of the structure is comprised of a dependance for the London Transport Museum. Ironically, at its current location in Covent Garden, the museum is disconnected from any kind of public transport. I have proposed to move the metro section to my design, where, high in the sky, it offers a visibility unfamiliar to the users of the metro.
gl + 10200
gl + 4080
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 8000
gl - 12000
gl - 16000
gl + 10200
gl + 4080
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 8000
gl - 12000
gl - 16000
gl + 10200
gl + 4080
gl + 0
gl - 2520
gl - 5100
gl - 12000
gl - 16000
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 9690
section aa’ 1:100
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 9690
section bb’ 1:100
gl + 0
gl - 5100
gl - 9690
section cc’ 1:100
Since the most important design requirement was a fluid transition between the underground and the overground, the building has been mainly designed from the cross section. This collection of three of the sections clearly shows the spatial dynamics of the continous staircase landscape, the relation between the museum high up in the air and the functioning of the disc in creating a set of ‘screens’ in the station hall.
aa’ bb’ cc’
how it’s made: An illustration of the possible uses of the public spaces along the building’s edges. These functions are similar to the kiosks often found in stations. Whereas those are merely put there as a filler function, in my building they form an essential part of the public image of the building. The space is not simply a station anymore, it has become a public square in the city, the edges filled with
life and sounds. Although these spaces as configured as completely public, the private element has been cleverly woven into their designs. Fences that become display stands, mobile bars that designate areas of consumption, and the choice of ‘soft’ materials such as wood for occupational areas and ‘hard’ materials such as concrete for the circulation spaces.
A number of different concert hall configurations, ordered chronologically from left to right, top to bottom. The final design was eventually rendered as below.
internship NL Architects
I
spent my internship in the spring and summer of 2007 at NL Architects in Amsterdam. The main reason for choosing this office was the way it operates. They pursue no particular architectural style, instead they focus on continually reinventing both the assignments as well as the architectural process. The main project I worked on was a design competition for a music theater in Padova, Italy, together with Architectuur Studio Herman Hertzberger. During the period of work I was responsible for the design of the concert hall itself. What you see here is the result of this process. when: January-September 2007 where: NL Architects, Amsterdam
prss release #14 ,june 10 2008
0 1 # se
a e l e r ss 08
pray 12 20 ,m
the
p
pa ent
nd
epe
ind
he
|t one
log er b
the independent paper blog aggregator
ator
reg
agg
an
rdi
gua
z d est ire reen ger e arv |w e ran the g ltur ge h zin onnect e st me to e u n a c h g a t r a c | and | st elco azin is m y to ror ace tasy f ter golf: wt mag ropol ew wa | sp 6 n -fan d t hy o e dro rap tels an cabin s | me mes a t | a45 actual y g h o top ry ho ters | imles ere co vecraf ut not and ions luxu soil ea t not a dead, h h.p. lo real b s 1. ulat , pec the less, bu less is ure of e city e time s 2. c i t oet site i wire chitec ew gamre | th 3. o-p n e ge mu anti-ar o the n e futu 4. iqu the come t meat thtizen ce: ant 5. wel vitro plane e veni 6. is in ride | ere lik 7. rie ma on p ndon w 8. nne if lo v-a 9. | n tio 10. stra illu i.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
un studios post rotterdam | eikonographia chinese gvt: don’t be a spastic - get drastic about plastic | very feel Letter of the day: Nouvel’s ‘Joke Architecture’ wows Parisians | star tribune About an intriguing urban computing assemblage | r-echos EURO 2008 - Fan Camp Vienna. The Sheetrock Space. | anarchitecture Well-managed sprawl can make a city liveable | the age “Peak Information”: Libraries and the End of Oil | citystates What we talk about when we talk about singularity | rough type Latour 2: ANT and the building of the social | exploration through example data gourmet | information architects
i.
illustration | v-annemarie
Mascherine antismog sui monumenti http://www.corriere.it/gallery/Cronache/vuoto.shtml?2008/06_Giugno/roma/1&10
45
19 188
/2 ner ner wag wag eoff s/geoff by g to !, o !! ph AD om/ AAA kr.c AAA .flic DEE /www :/ p tt h
rg
ase.o rele
rssw.p
ww
15/
www.prss-release.org
other things
o
ne of my other interests has always been writing about architecture and everything that surrounds it. I first started writing when I joined the editorial team of pantheon//, the magazine of Stylos, my faculty’s student union. The magazine focused on a wide range of architectural projects, and always attempts to overcome the boundaries of its field and expand to the world beyond it. I have also been on the editorial board of B_Nieuws, my faculty’s own triweekly newspaper. Where pantheon// was more a real architecture magazine, B_Nieuws primarily revolved around printing the many voices our faculty contains. Most recently I started a online pdf magazine, PRSS-Release (www.prss-release.org), with a friend. Every week we collect 10 blog articles - mostly related to architecture but wide in its scope - and put them in a uniform, easy-to-read pdf format, that is downloadable for people to read as a real paper magazine.
EASA Since 2004 I have been involved in EASA - the European Architecture Students Assembly. This is a network of architecture student from over 40 European countries that, for two weeks, come together each summer on a different location to meet each other, participate in and organize all different kinds of workshops, and attend lectures and parties. The project below was a workshop I attended in 2004. Located on a square in a dilapidated area of Roubaix (France) this old sea container was transformed, in cooperation with the locals, into a mobile bar and meeting area. For the past three years I have been a workshop tutor myself. The photo on the left is a result of a clothing workshop called ‘talking t-shirt’, in which we took a critical look at the generic tourist t-shirts - in this case in Budapest - and tried to come up with alternative designs that tell a story not just interesing for visitors, but also relevant to the inhabitants of the city. The highway on the t-shirt is referring to the immense canyon the river Danube creates in the Budapest city center. when: 2004-2008 where: France, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece, Ireland
a number of questions: why is the faculty that is most interested in society the farthest away from it? why is discussion about the position of our faculty within the university still somewhat of a taboo? why is the campus of our university still an ambiguous place, more a stopover than a destination? why is there so much response to the burning down of our faculty? a number of answers:
mekelweg
location, location, location.AND feeling at home. a new faculty cannot possibly solve the current ‘crisis’ in architecture and re-invent our position within a global world. what it can do however, is making us rethink our position in a local world. for the past 40 years, we have been comfortably in hiding from the rest of the world in our building at the end of the mekelweg, away from society, away from that what we are supposed to be really interested in. no wonder we feel misunderstood. now that we have the opportunity to claim a position more towards there where ‘it’ happens, we should seriously reconsider moving around the campus a bit, to some place where we can really share our passion for our job, our sense of community and our unrelenting esprit de corps with the rest of the university, with the city of delft. we consciously do not offer a new concept for a building. we only want everyone to realize that something seemingly small like the location of a building can make a serious difference. think global, but act local; the world will be next.
street of bk
the street of bk was a pleasant place to be; however, it was in its concept essentially centrifugal. people would only use it as the starting point of their journey through the building, but never as the true center of activities.
A
mekelstreet of bk
whatever the new building will be like, the street of bk should return. but this time as a centripetal place, drawing everybody in, from the students inside to the people on the mekelweg.
are: marjolein overtoom, bk, 22yrs jochem vermeulen, ti, 26yrs marten dashorst, bk, 24yrs jack breen, bk, 55yrs renske van slooten, io, 23yrs nina sickenga, bk, 21yrs daniëlle van geer, --, 11yrs rene van geer, io, 46yrs
inside out
tu mahall
B pandora’s box
top coffee
bk plaza
mekelway
building for bouwkunde ideas competition This is the submission for a weekend long workshop at the DUT which focused on innovative ideas for the design of a new Faculty of Architecture in Delft. Contrary to the other teams, our team decided not to focus on the content of the building or the program, but on the context - our daily life. We proposed a relocation of the faculty towards the beginning of the campus, instead of staying on the old location.
Architecture is a discipline that should be amongst the people, and close to them - in this case close to the city center of Delft. A simple movement would in this case both bring the architect once again in the central position in society it deserves, while on the other hand also function as a gesture of hospitality towards the other students on campus, creating a mutual understanding of the importance of social context in architecture. when: june 2008 where: DUT Faculty of Architecture people’s choice award