Matthew’s long expected new book is out: Deventer, a novel about architecture, a fantastic read, an actual page turner!
When Matthijs, the protagonist, asked me for a picture of WOS 8 to include in the book I found a couple of snapshots from our trip to Leidschenrijn around 1998.
During this site visit we met one of the neighbors. He wasn’t happy. He claimed that his property lost its value. The people next door had been able to sell the land on which WOS 8 was build; they at least received decent compensation. Now he wanted to move, but he couldn’t… he was held hostage by the black rubber monster in his backyard. Frustrated to the bone he even didn’t allow his children -the actual target group of the project- to play with it. (Some time later, we were told several times, he even started to attack visitors with a pitch fork…).
The neighbor asked why we didn’t make the building more similar to the old farm that he lived in. I tried to explain that the urban envelope didn’t allow a bigger building, nor did the demands for the machine on the inside allow for a smaller one… a rustic pitched roof just wouldn’t fit.
Then Matthew launched a stunning idea: inspired by the unifying possibilities of polyurethane revealed during our site visit, Matthew proposed that if the neighbor really insisted in a coherent relationship between the two buildings the solution would be simple: why not spray over the entire farm!
NL Architects Blog 