The Dutch Police is one of the largest owners of public real estate in the Netherlands. From police station to forensic laboratory, from listed buildings in the centre of The Hague to large-scale facilities next to the motorway in Driebergen: the task of accommodating the Police is as diverse as it is challenging. Themes such as innovation and sustainability, health and safety, as well as identity, flexibility and affordability are all of relevance for the Police’s accommodation strategy. Efforts are being made to strike a new balance between the physical, mobile and digital workplace.

Since the formation of the National Police, there has been an enormous challenge to accommodate the organization. In realizing this task, the police has the ambition to raise the quality of police buildings as well as the experience users have in the buildings. At the same time, the police is at the heart of an ever changing society: The accommodation needs to meet the requirements posed by several developments such as the energy transition, climate change and digitization. How do these developments influence the task of future-proofing (cultural) heritage? Which role can our heritage buildings play in these transitions?

The key lies in our present actions coupled with the lessons of the past. Different approaches on Built Heritage will open our eyes and help with today’s issues. To see what is valuable. Will the decisions made in the past be our strength or pitfall? How will objects developed in the past, exposed to today’s spatial developments, help us? Through the power of imagination, the Studio Vacant
heritage from Heritage and Architecture proudly reveals many possibilities.

This booklet presents the work of fourth-year students from Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Chair of Heritage & Architecture, Section Heritage & Architecture. What you see is the result of one semester’s work (20 weeks) to study together the conservation and redesign of De Zonnehof in Amersfoort. The international group of students worked all on the architectural relation to de Zonnehof, on different ways to exhibit, on climate control and on sustainability. In the exhibition you see the models, and, in this booklet, a summary of the projects is presented. The section Heritage & Architecture (HA) at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft focuses on the design challenges related to heritage conservation. Since 2015, the three chairs within the section of HA are structured in a triangular framework defined by their distinctive yet complementary knowledge domains: Values + Technology + Design.

On 31 december 2015, the department store of Vroom & Dreesmann (V&D), which was founded in 1887, officially went bankrupt. This ended the rich history of a department store that had branches in many Dutch cities and towns. This raises the question: what happens to the traditional twentieth century commercial areas in major Dutch cities in an era that everyone is shopping online? In the historic city centres of Haarlem, Leiden, Dordrecht and Amersfoort for example, many buildings are vacant because traditional retailing is almost impossible. For over a century, the use of the city centre was dictated by commercial activities yet nowadays shopping streets are empty. Shops and department stores are closed, leaving a desolate image. In 2016 V&D went bankrupt and all their buildings became vacant. The revival of Hudson’s Bay for several V&D buildings was not successful either. These large buildings with clear corporate identities and the smaller retail shops are in urgent need of transformation to secure liveability. This research contributes to the broader question of Vacant Heritage: can you find indicators for building typologies that will become obsolete and are there general concepts for revitalisation? In this book, eight different vacant department stores from the V&D will be analysed. All buildings are located in large or small cities throughout the Netherlands: Leiden, Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Amersfoort, Maastricht, Enschede and Dordrecht. These department stores were all developed within the historic city walls, in what we now call the historic centers. The typological research for this book is linked to the Vacant Heritage studio. Traditional research methods into typologies in architecture almost always assume typologies based on functions. Typology = ‘the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics’ (Wikipedia). However, as the function and use of the original buildings change nowadays, a different approach is needed to investigate building typologies. Instead of the functions, the space becomes central. Research into similarities and differences in the spatial characteristics of a collection of buildings, which were originally realized for one specific function (group), yields a series of spatial properties that can give direction to the possibilities for redesign. Spatial building typology = the study of types and systematic classification of the types of buildings according to their common spatial characteristics and qualities. Over the years, various buildings originally designed for one specific function have been the subject of education and research at Heritage & Architecture (HA). As there are: churches, monasteries, department stores, museums, factory buildings for production, educational buildings, etc. The research builds on the research carried out by HA in the tradition of Building Analysis.