Hydra-Pier - Floriade Municipal Pavilion
Haarlemmermeer is a dynamically developing city located halfway between Amsterdam and the international airport Schiphol. It was founded only 150 years ago, when the Dutch managed to reclaim this land from the sea. The city and its surroundings lie five meters below sea level. Haarlemmermeer hosts the international flower exhibition Floriade every 10 years. You can certainly imagine the preparations for this event in the land of flowers.
On the occasion of the exhibition in 2002, an international competition was announced for the entry pavilion. The tradition of building garden pavilions has a rich history in the Netherlands. The competition was won by none other than the couple Rashid-Couture, also known as Asymptote Architecture from New York. Their work is characterized by the integration of virtual and real environments, massive applications of digital technologies in architectural design, and the exploration of the behaviors of an information society. The Hydra-Pier pavilion is one of the few built projects by this duo. The poetic concept of the pavilion, which connects the real physical environment with virtual experiences of visitors, surely impressed the jury of the competition.
Hani Rashid, while explaining the background of this project, emphasizes that it is not just about realizing a visualized computer model, but about a place of unconventional sensory experiences (you can surely feel the touches of virtual reality). The fundamental concept of the pavilion is the connection between the world of sea and land. The pavilion consists of two parts - an entrance wing and the exhibition space itself, which is covered by a second, more prominent wing. The roof of the pavilion is covered with a flowing water film that, according to Rashid, maps the pavilion and influences the light atmosphere in the interior with its animated texture. To allow sunlight to penetrate through the water film into the interior, it was necessary to develop a glass roof made from laminated glass. The company that was able to realize such a highly technological structure was Octatube, whose director is Dr. Mick Eekhout - a professor at the faculty of architecture in Delft, in the department of development of building components. Eekhout's work with bent laminated glass panels was so fundamental that Hydra-Pier earned the DuPont Benedictus Award.
Visitors, after passing through the water filter (a waterfall in the gap between the wings), enter the pavilion under the water surface, which is unprecedentedly appreciated in the Netherlands. Among others, Aaron Betsky, director of NAi, praised Hydra-Pier, having organized an exhibition about Asymptote at NAi this year. Speaking of the exhibition - they have a somewhat unconventional scenario at Hydra-Pier. The exhibition panels are digitally projected directly onto the glass roof of the pavilion. The multimedia exhibition further enhances the level of the surrounding lake with interesting light effects.
In the end, the pavilion's constructed state brings a certain disappointment, perhaps due to strict symmetry as a remnant of archaic composition or the dominating surface of the lake. Another star of digital design - Greg Lynn - characterizes contemporary architecture straddling the virtual and real world as adolescent. In his opinion, the formal vocabulary of the emerging architecture is still developing - he notes this phenomenon as typical for the physical construction of the entire current generation of digital creators. So perhaps digital architecture will soon reach maturity. Personally, I am very much looking forward to the first "adult" works.
On the occasion of the exhibition in 2002, an international competition was announced for the entry pavilion. The tradition of building garden pavilions has a rich history in the Netherlands. The competition was won by none other than the couple Rashid-Couture, also known as Asymptote Architecture from New York. Their work is characterized by the integration of virtual and real environments, massive applications of digital technologies in architectural design, and the exploration of the behaviors of an information society. The Hydra-Pier pavilion is one of the few built projects by this duo. The poetic concept of the pavilion, which connects the real physical environment with virtual experiences of visitors, surely impressed the jury of the competition.
Hani Rashid, while explaining the background of this project, emphasizes that it is not just about realizing a visualized computer model, but about a place of unconventional sensory experiences (you can surely feel the touches of virtual reality). The fundamental concept of the pavilion is the connection between the world of sea and land. The pavilion consists of two parts - an entrance wing and the exhibition space itself, which is covered by a second, more prominent wing. The roof of the pavilion is covered with a flowing water film that, according to Rashid, maps the pavilion and influences the light atmosphere in the interior with its animated texture. To allow sunlight to penetrate through the water film into the interior, it was necessary to develop a glass roof made from laminated glass. The company that was able to realize such a highly technological structure was Octatube, whose director is Dr. Mick Eekhout - a professor at the faculty of architecture in Delft, in the department of development of building components. Eekhout's work with bent laminated glass panels was so fundamental that Hydra-Pier earned the DuPont Benedictus Award.
Visitors, after passing through the water filter (a waterfall in the gap between the wings), enter the pavilion under the water surface, which is unprecedentedly appreciated in the Netherlands. Among others, Aaron Betsky, director of NAi, praised Hydra-Pier, having organized an exhibition about Asymptote at NAi this year. Speaking of the exhibition - they have a somewhat unconventional scenario at Hydra-Pier. The exhibition panels are digitally projected directly onto the glass roof of the pavilion. The multimedia exhibition further enhances the level of the surrounding lake with interesting light effects.
In the end, the pavilion's constructed state brings a certain disappointment, perhaps due to strict symmetry as a remnant of archaic composition or the dominating surface of the lake. Another star of digital design - Greg Lynn - characterizes contemporary architecture straddling the virtual and real world as adolescent. In his opinion, the formal vocabulary of the emerging architecture is still developing - he notes this phenomenon as typical for the physical construction of the entire current generation of digital creators. So perhaps digital architecture will soon reach maturity. Personally, I am very much looking forward to the first "adult" works.
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