project10:Challenge

Beginning

The NDSM warf is situated in Amsterdam. To be more specific in Amsterdam-North alongside the IJ-river. NDSM used to be a shipdock, but after its bankruptcy it became an abandoned industrial area. People from artist communities were drawn towards the site due to its character and established a new artist community at the warf. Nowadays more people and events are coming to the site. Commercial companies like MTV and RedBull have moved their workers to NDSM, not only because prices are cheaper than the city-center. NDSM has a vibrant constantly changing environment. The whole year round festivals are coming and going famous festivals like Valtifest and Voltt, the theater on the warf and the biggest flea market are held on site.

Due to its former function, the warf characteristics result in a great scale difference between big and small, open and closed. For a city like Amsterdam it is unique to still have such open space so close to the city.

NDSM is connected to the central station with a fifteen minute ferry trip. After the completion of the new subway, NDSM can be reached more often and faster from the city center of Amsterdam. Bikes and Cars can enter the site via Amsterdam North.

Eco System of NDSM

The challenge for the new design at the NDSM is to create an architectural intervention within the existing ecosystem, becoming part of this ecosystem. Before we can design this intervention we have to research the existing ecosystem. To identify this changing eco system we use a tool called protoTAG designed by Tomasz Jaskiewicz. People, objects and buildings are identified at the site and tagged. Each tag can be updated in order to keep te data up to date. Connections and relationships between tags can be made and broken. Clicking on the image below will show you the identified peoples and objects that are important for the project, most of the identifications have a link to the protoTAG eco system to discover the connections among each other.

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Inspire me to change is one of the 14 projects that are again part of one big masterplan. Inspire me to change is not a project on its own but has connections with the other projects. Because each project is connected to others again, the 14 projects are a eco system as a whole. Because Inspire me to change strives to draw more people to the NDSM, invisible connections are made to all the projects, since the interventions provide more and different programs, these programs need to have people and demand in order to survive.

problems and opportunities

Initial design concept

The pavilion; inspire me to change will be located at the hub of the banks of the NDSM. This prominent position provides a great visibility for visitors entering the warf by boat, and is visible from a far distance along the IJ banks. The pavilion will grasp the attention from both nearby as far away and create curiosity for people to discover and draw more people to the NDSM, which creates moreover a greater demand for connectivity. This enhances the development for the other projects at the site.

The pavilion consists of a structure that needs to be temporary; the aim is to build a structure that only has connections that connect by themselves as shown in the picture below.

The surface of the structure will be divided into a grid where each intersection point will get a number. Every intersection point has a movable structure along the Z axis. Due to the more than 200 different sub-structures spaces can be created and light effects can be made, according to the rules of the input.

The architectural quality to be achieved is shown in the precedents below.