Brussels & Antwerp

This last weekend Maya and I hopped a train Friday after work and arrived in Brussels two and a half hours later.  We met Maya's friend Hugo (a Canadian doing an internship with NATO) who showed us around Brussels on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday morning. Everyone I talked to before leaving told me Antwerp was better (and we stopped for a few hours there on our way home to watch the sun set over the river) but I must say I loved Brussels.  It's a very international city dominated by foreign interns working at NATO, the UN, the European Parliament, and the European Commission among others.  The fries are incredible (Hugo took us to a local frite maison that uses traditional potatoes and traditional ox fat) and so is the beer.  Also had moules frite and waffles (separately of course) to keep energy up as we walked all over Brussels from the glass and steel European Parliament buildings in the new part of the city to the incredibly ornate Royal Palace and Grande Place. Antwerp on the way home was also a beautiful city although it was a little dead due to it being Sunday.  I found my second castle on the banks of the river that winds through the city and Maya and I lost track of time and had to run several blocks to catch our train back to Amsterdam on time.

Oh, and I can't forget the florentines from Mary's chocolatier.  Undescribably good.  Still dreaming of them.

Mary's Chocolat.  One of the top 3 chocolatiers in Brussels.

There's a new album for pictures now (albums are capped at 200 pictures)


Here is the link to the old album (from August until mid October)

And the link to the new album (mid-October onwards, including pictures from Brussels and Antwerp)

Enjoi!

Pre-Weekend Update

Just a quick note because I promised a design drawing this week and I'll be away in Brussels all weekend.  So here it is: an interior design and illustration for a highly-flexible building being built in Amsterdam Nord.  The principal asked for 'a very free plan, drawing from 'plug-in' elements that highlight the versatility of the space.'  I'm working on variations of the plan that incorporate different combinations of living and working spaces, but this one is living (~110 m2) on the left and a small office (~170 m2) on right right.  Click on the image for a full screen view.

Bike Ride to Almere

Well this weekend I had two goals: bike to Almere (30 km away) to see some modern architecture, and bike around Amsterdam to see the modern architecture around the outskirts.  You see, Amsterdam isn't built like traditional north american cities with the tall buildings in the middle and the height generally descending with distance from the centre.  Because of its preserved historic district in central amsterdam, its a bit of the opposite.  The modern (and tall) buildings are around the outside and I haven't seen most of them.  Anyways, the plan was a weekend of modern architecture.  Saturday morning Maya and I got up early and left on our bikes on a cold but sunny morning.  By the time we reached Ijburg about 30 minutes from home (and got a little lost in an area of expensive new homes) I realized my front tire was quite flat.  Quite upset at my bike, we returned home where I pumped it up and tested it to see if it would hold air.  It seemed like it would, so we cancelled our tour of Amsterdam and moved the trip to Almere to Sunday. 

The bike was working (not sure about the source of the flatness) and we had a wonderful 30km ride along the coast taking the Zuiderzee route.  It's a bike path that follows the coastline around the big bay and crosses the massive dijk (dike) at the ocean.  We ran into herds of sheep on it, passed through the little town of Muiden with its enormouse yachts and Muidenslot Castle (my first real castle ever!- sorry King Eddy), and passed over the big bridge to Holland's newest province, Flevoland where Almere is.  Flevoland is reclaimed land that has been drained and used for agriculture and cities.  Almere, a city of nearly 200 000, is very young- the first building there was completed in 1976!  so nothing older than that and it really feels new.  We saw some very interesting forms, facades, materials, and it was quite lively despite being Sunday (a day where no shops are open and no one goes out).  Back home we went to complete our 60km bike trip in time to make lunch for Monday's work.  Speaking of work, I've started designing the interior of a live/work apartment block in Amsterdam North.  They're drawings to use for sales and won't actually be built, but its fun to actually be designing on my internship.  Will show some drawings later this week or next when its more complete.  For now, enjoy some shots of the weekend trip:

Thanksgiving in Holland

Well there was no turkey, sweet potatoes, or stuffing, but my Thanksgiving Weekend was pretty good nonetheless.  Maya and I took a train to Haarlem to visit some fellow Canadians (Paul and Katia) for a somewhat festive dinner.  We had mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and sausages, and to make it a little more Canadian, Katia made Saskatoonberry pie from some saskatoon berries she smuggled across the border the last time she came back from Canada. So good!


Anyways, I thought I would let the pictures do the talking for this post. All the pictures are from Haarlem and Rotterdam. There's 57 new ones on my facebook page and you can see them (and the old ones) by clicking here.

Amsterdam Apartment Renovation

Well I'm happy to say I've booked my flight to Sardinia for the last weekend in November.  At 32 Euros, how could I go wrong?  I'll stay two nights with my friend Gavino and hopefully experience some authentic Italy.  Fingers crossed for good weather, a lot of the draw is the natural landscape.

As promised, I'm posting tonight another example of work I've been doing in the office.  It's a small project, but its actually some design work which can be hard to find in your first architecture internship.  

First is the original (below).  It's a one-bedroom apartment with small spaces, a traditional Dutch bathroom set-up where the WC is seperate from the shower, and as you can see, is really just small rooms and tight corridors.

So here is the redesign(below).  Some elements could not be moved (service shafts, water heater etc) while others had some flexibility but couldn't move much (washing machine, appliances, bathroom fixtures).  First its been opened up: the entrance now looks into the kitchen so that when entering you're not presented with a narrow corridor.    The bathroom is redesigned in what I assume is a more 'North American' fashion and the washing machine is tucked into a closet instead of sitting next to the shower.  The kitchen becomes more open as walls are removed to link the living spaces.  The balcony is readjusted to increase kitchen space and create a connection with the living room.  The program is adjusted to better reflect the private/public relationship of a house.  The majority of the apartment becomes one large room as the 'one-bedroom' apartment turns into a one-bedroom/studio hybrid. Two objects (totems?) separate living and sleeping, sleeping and working: a closet/shelving unit, and a desk/TV stand. Now, light enters the living, sleeping, and working spaces from both sides, but admittedly at the cost of losing the 100% physical seperation between living and sleeping.

Wet.

Today was the death of summer.  I guess I had enjoyed the sunny, 25 degree weather a little too much in the last two weeks.  Perhaps I hadn't taken the cloudy, windy weather of the past few days seriously.  Perhaps I thought the 70% chance of rain on the forecast meant it would rain while I was at work but I could probably get to work before it really started.  Boy was I wrong.

It wasn't raining when I left my apartment this morning.  I brought my bike out of the storage room and I was prepared for some hard bicycling into the wind on my half hour ride to work.  I had forgotten my rain jacket at work yesterday.  I had taken it as a precaution, and left it when the day wasn't so bad and the thought of rain had slipped my mind.

Thirty seconds into my ride, before I had even crossed the first street 20 meters from my door, the rain came.  From no rain, to tropical storm almost instantly. I was drenched within seconds and began to realize the miserable morning I had in front of me.  I had looked for rain pants at the local store on the weekend.  I hadn't found any, but the weather had been nice on the weekend and I thought I could wait another week to make that purchase.

You might think this is where I proceed to tell you about the 30 minutes of struggling through high winds and driving rain, but the truth is, after a minute or two of intense rain it sort of stopped.  The wind was still there, and crossing the two humped-back bridges to work was difficult, but when I was just 5 minutes away from arriving at work I was starting to dry off a little, even starting to feel slightly comfortable.  Maybe starting to think the morning wouldn't be so bad.

So, of course, it started to pour again.  Redrenched, newly miserable, and thinking someone up in those clouds was playing with me, I arrived at work and walked into the office, dragging a puddle behind me.  Now I'm sitting at my desk, the wet fabric of my clothes sticking to my skin, drinking my double espresso and writing this blog entry while I wait for my boss to get here.

Stay tuned: later this week I'll post an apartment renovation I've been designing this week.

Work (That's why I'm here, right?)

So Erin asked me to write something about my office and the work I'm doing this September as an intern.

I'm working for Tekton Architekten, a small office in Amsterdam that was created in 1990.  The office (like most architectural offices) grows and shrinks with the economy, and has been downsizing since 2008.    Currently Tekton is taking over Gijs van Thienen Architekten which means a lot of paperwork and the integration of new employees this fall.

From Left: Cokk, Gavino (hiding), Gijs, Eric, Analeese.  The seated woman in the foreground is a financial advisor involved in the firm takeover and I can't recall her name.

The Tekton crew right now is made up of Bert and Cokk, (the two principals), Martijn (junior architect), and Gavino and myself (interns).  The addition of GVT Architekten means we get Eric and Analeese (junior architects).

I've been working on a variety of projects so far, including an Agri-Resort in Yuci, China, a collective housing proposal in Amsterdam, details for a private house in Portugal, an innovative HVAC proposal for a mixed-use development in Amsterdam, and most recently an urban design proposal for a multi-family residential building in Amsterdam.

Here is an example of what I was doing for the Yuci project.  I took renders from Cinema 4D done by the other intern and used photoshop to give them scale, materiality, and emotion.  This one is an interior perspective of the wedding chapel.

Before

After

 

In other news, Amsterdam is having another beautiful weekend and Maya and I are off to enjoy some sunshine and workout in the park nearby.  Hope everyone (anyone?) reading this is having a great weekend wherever you are.

Will