The Stockholm City Library was designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund and constructed between 1924 and 1928. A lack of space has always been a problem, already after three years, the fourth wing of the building was constructed, completing the square. After this, only minor changes have been made to the library. Around the turn of the century, libraries were faced with a change of identity with the rise of neo liberalism and the increase of digital media. A 2006 competition sought to expand the library 3-fold; this competition was abandoned for political reasons and public unrest. In 2012 and 2014, two programs were written, leading to the commissioning of British architecture firm Caruso St John to work out a proposal to renovate the library and connect it with the underlying bazar. Again, this project was abandoned for political reasons. In 2023, the Interiors Buildings Cities studio was tasked with interpreting these briefs and finding a way to change to Stockholm City Library to turn into a contemporary one.

This project specifically, works completely inside the building, trying to as little as possible to preserve as much as possible of Asplund’s original architecture whilst still optimizing its operations and creating space for contemporary library programme. To achieve this, the library is relieved of the overhead programme that is intended for the system of public libraries in Stockholm, programme has been shuffled around, and opportunities were found where interventions could be done.

Within the rotunda and the perimeter halls, only conservation work has been undertaken except for the basement, and on the entrance floor below the rotunda and in the north wing. These spaces have the least original qualities and are therefore places where new interventions can be made. Here contemporary library programme is housed like a city living room, a café, group rooms, and a lecture space. The geometry of the circular drum, within the square perimeter halls, creates left over spaces: poché. Originally these pochés were intended to be lightwells, through time they have gradually been filled with servant functions, circulation spaces, ducts, and storage spaces. Because of their young age and their inferior architectural qualities, there are more liberties for demolition, however keeping elements that are still of practical use like elevators. The project fills these poché spaces to a degree, with new spaces that aid the functioning of Asplund’s library and are in dialogue with his architecture. These infills now have a dignity and aid the Asplund library in its functioning to ensure the preservation of this architectural masterpiece.

Over the past year, we have been working on a proposal for the expansion of the Stockholm City Library. Two main questions have guided our thought process throughout the year: “Why should the Stockholm City Library be expanded?” and “Having chosen to expand the Stockholm City Library, how does this expansion add to the existing Library?”.
Over the last twenty years, several briefs have been launched for the expansion of the Library. When analyzing these briefs, it becomes clear that there is a need for more public space. Furthermore, there is a need for a more contemporary library, with a focus on pleasant seating places for all, and space for contemporary initiatives and events. On top of that, there is an opportunity to bring back adult education in the Stockholm City Library, by freeing up the top floor of the Asplund Building, which is currently used for office spaces.
The expansion adds qualities to the existing building, by creating spaces that look out instead of looking in, with an open and inviting character, in contrast to the Asplund building, which has an inward-focussed character. On top of that, the new extension building creates a connection between the Asplund building, the first annex building, the market square, and the Observatory Hill, while also creating a connection between the interior and exterior of the Asplund building. Finally, the extension building is part of the actual landscape as it follows the structure of the City and the Observatory Hill.

96 years after Eric Gunnar Asplund designed Stockholm City Library, this narrative portrays the evolution of the Library as a whole, as an essential institution of the local society, and as one of Asplund’s oeuvres. By embracing the surroundings, as Asplund did, and revealing the hidden processes of this public institution, the building will enter a new era that will help it evolve throughout the years and encourage people to engage with the city and its components.
Practically unfolding the guidelines mentioned above meant exploring the scale and the materiality of the interventions suggested.

The transformation of the Stockholm City Library into a common space would not happen through a massive expansion but through acupuncture and highly contextual interventions. Their scale and materiality were explored together in an attempt to engage the library, the city and the landscape.

The aim of this project is to reflect on the current situation of the Stockholm City Library and form a position towards the renewal and extension approach towards the current City Library. My approach is to connect the main library and the annex buildings by adding in-between spaces between them to create more public spaces and therefore form a intergrated library complex. By adding new public spaces connected to the existing structure, a sequence of spaces is created. The change in spatial experiences then influecne the way of how the library users accomodate the library. The interior design drew a focus on the interplay of the existing structure and the new added space, as it creates the interactions of different spaces to create the interactions between diverse social groups.

This project stems from an interest in institutions and the materialisation of politics within them, implicit and explicit. Art and architecture both have the capacity to be a scaffolding upon which protest and proposition of alternative relations can be built and communicated. While museum and art has always been implicated in commercial and political reality of power and authority, with the retreat of public funding and an increase in private, there is a gap which museums try to fill by adopting business strategies of shopping malls to cover the huge costs of heating, cooling and dehumidifying their expansive interiors in addition to competing with the private art market. At the same time, they strive to maintain their authority through institutional responsibility towards the society.

The aim of my project is to question the role and impact of architecture in the politics of a museum, with an understanding of the complex reality of museum-making. The interrogation of the original competition brief for the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA) with regards to the budget, the spatial ambitions or demands, and the fundamental sustainability of resources, led me to propose why an alternative proposal for the M HKA could and should be put forward. The economic and spatial arguments, together with my position towards the climate crisis and research on the history of the institution, have resulted in a proposition radically different from the original brief, but still very much connected to it and resulting from it.

Adapting the existing courthouse building on site for a public archive of contemporary art not only allows a more intelligent budget distribution, but forces different power relations with regards to public funding, its responsibilities and sense of permanence. Densifying and reducing the amount of space required for art encourages more targeted architectural decisions, other types of spaces, actually fitting more appropriately into the existing courthouse building.

This project inscribes itself in a trend of public archives, while at the same time taking a critical position of an outsider-insider. The adaptation of the courthouse for the new MHKA allows a unique focus on the processes before and during the construction, acting as an event in the city, making transparent the process of change and adaptation.

The architecture of the new museum will be an expression of its positioning towards art, the public and the city. As my graduation project, it also expresses my position towards an uncritical building culture of competitions, ethical and professional sensitivity to the larger social and environmental context. By preserving the court building, I argue that embodied carbon is as valid an argument against demolition as heritage value and by interrogating and negotiating the demands of the competition brief against its budget, type of institution and the current economic, political and ecological reality, I question the role and responsibility of the architect in the face of multiplicity of crises.

This year's theme of the studio is based on ‘An Architecture For Art’. From churches and palaces, through the development of the Palace of Culture in the 19th century: public museums and galleries, to modern studios and galleries, art centres and the White Cube of the second half of the last century, and the gradual similarity between commercial and gallery spaces, art spaces have gradually evolved and their attitude towards the public, society and art has changed. The studio focuses on the controversial area of the space of the contemporary art gallery and also considers its societal role and how its responsibilities to the heterogenous contemporary city and its diverse population might be physically manifested in the image and presence of a new public building.
The project takes an actual project as its starting point, allowing the conditions and concerns of a real brief for a real client to be one key reference point in the development of both individual and collective concerns. This year we work on a competition brief for the redevelopment of M HKA, the contemporary art museum of Antwerp, on a new site close to its existing one in the South of the Belgian city. At the same time, the site is in the old court building in Belgium, which is an important architectural heritage, so there is value in considering the retention or partial retention of the old building.
So it became the theme of my project to consider the function of the new museum while preserving the existing building, using the New and the Old to provide variation to the public and exhibition spaces of the museum.

M HKA institution has its roots in the avant-garde, bottom-up initiatives of artists who were escaping the rigidness of institutions and sought for alternative spaces to practice art. There is a fundamental contradiction between what M HKA’s history is and what future it wants. Therefore, I decided to take over the building that exists on the plot to create the last act of appropriation and embody the spirit of the institution by this decision.

As the existing court building could not meet the requirements of the brief and it doesn’t represent any significant architectural values, I treat it as a scenography and a tool to organize a museum rather than a relic. As a result, the massing of the museum wraps and “consumes” the existing structure.

The building is a mediator between two urban qualities - the park and the riverbank promenade. Vast urban space opens for visitors as well as pedestrians who do not intend to visit the institution.

Occasionally, the exhibition part and back office blend together, so the visitor can experience a transparent museum, where boundaries are softened. What is more, exhibitions can happen in corridors or former office rooms as well as in the basement, which compliments vast spaces in the new part of the project and allows for multiple exhibitions to happen simultaneously.

The facade represents the idea of wrapping and hiding, being mostly a solid, hanging element during inactive moments, but it also has the capacity to represent what happens inside the building if needed. Different treatments of metal panels and meshes allow for various levels of transparency and reveal the insides of the institution as well as treating the building as a billboard.

The scope of this graduation project is to design a new building for Antwerp’s Museum of contemporary art (M HKA). A building that can accommodate the museum’s ambitions following the transition from the M HKA to the Flemish Museum of contemporary art (VMHK). The museum has been appointed a location in Antwerp South for its new building and has released a program with its requirements, which has been used as a basis for this project.

Museums are complicated buildings. In order to be able to design such a building, it is necessary to gain a thorough understanding of its environment: the city of Antwerp, and more specifically the museum’s location, the typology of the museum of contemporary art, and of the M HKA itself: its rich history, the type of museum it currently is and its ambitions to become the VMHK.

In its brief, the client describes a desire for an atmosphere of both ‘industrial roughness and domestic intimacy’, as well as it being a ‘robust skeleton and a
volatile space of experimentation’. This notwithstanding, the architecture should
also be sustainable, in a broad sense: in its use of materials, in the use of
existing subsoil (parts), but mostly it should be adaptable to future, different use.

A written thesis on how to use the principle of pointillism as a method of using colour in the exterior of architecture & An architectural design that uses pointillism as one among other aspects to create a sequential process of arrival in order to provide a versatile experience of architecture.

This graduation project is focusing on and looking for the function and role of the future national bank, as an outcome of its current physical and social situation. The site of the project is the National Bank of Belgium, located in Brussels.
For its program, the bank has a public function and a reception hall, but mainly consist of office spaces and meeting rooms within a, with security line protected, area. The traditional program, like pressing and storing money, is already replaced to new buildings outside of the city center for better efficiency and land use. Next to that, the public and office program is losing its role due to digitalization. Organisational and programmatic changes are already made, but the architecture is still in its former state. Therefore, it is important to seek for new possibilities, and looking to the future role and image of the bank, whilst learning of the history of the Bank and its site.

The ambition of the National Bank of Belgium's project was to make a National institution accessible to the public. By opening the bank, both ideologically and physically, the dynamic of the bank is radically modified. The confrontation between the Bank and the public provides opportunities to gather, learn and improve. The change is subtle from the outside but radically modifies the way the bank functions.
The creation of a series of spaces within the bank directed towards the different publics of the bank and brings the domestic sphere into the institution itself.
The Bank of Opportunities is a space fostering a new kind of Bank and community.

This year, the Interiors Buildings Cities graduation studio
has revolved around the topic of the Future Bank. The project addresses the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium set in Brussels, consisting of a vast triangular urban block of 90.000 m2. The bank, designed by Van Goethem just after the Second World War, is an imposing building with a 200 meter long columnar façade rising up from the adjacent boulevard.

As the city of Brussels has declared itself a doughnut economy, the city is moving away from traditional forms of economics. The city is no longer aiming for unending growth, but aiming for stability, equality and wellbeing. Therefore the bank needs to be reframed within it’s new economic and societal context. What image does the bank want to portray in the 21st century?

Here the project began with the grass route movements, counteracting the heavy façade by creating more intimate spaces within the colonnade. This translated into reframing the bank into several parts with a new end stretching out towards the city. This allowed for more intimate spaces to be created within the vast urban block, creating a new public and inviting face of the bank. A new face in the city.

The National Bank of Belgium occupied a large, closed block on the edge of lower and upper Brussels. The building complex will become the workplace of the bank’s 1500 office-based staff. Moreover, the bank sees itself as a more open, permeable environment because of the increasingly digital finance and the move out of security functions. The bank's transformation aims to invite the public to enter the world of bank.
The project proposes the future bank as an open, inviting public interior. It provides its users with diverse urban experiences, new skills, and knowledge, and is an easy place to access for work, relaxation, eating, and learning. Elevated gardens are created in the main bank hall, connecting the public programs and leading people up to the citizen terrace on the rooftop. For staff, they are encouraged to grow their own vegetables and flowers on the newly added balconies and to cook and eat with colleagues in the lounges.

The brief of this year’s studio addresses the National Bank of Belgium located on the border of upper and lower parts of Brussels. The current fortress like megastructure that the bank occupies is imposing power and solidity, but is closing itself completely from the public. With the traditional role of the bank such as printing and storage of currency being relocated outside of the city and finance transitioning to virtual mediums, the National Bank of Belgium seeks to both redefine itself physically and at the same time rethink its role in the society. The future bank is a catalyst of change which would affect the city in various scales - through the future economy, society’s attitude and awareness.

Social equality and justice are among the foundations of the doughnut economy model which the bank and the city of Brussels strive for. However, currently the national bank is merely touching upon this aspects of the model. The national bank fails to positively contribute to the above stated core values, fails to fulfil its mission as a socially responsible and inclusive institution. Moreover, the money-based market system fails to reward many types of critical work—the work of building strong communities, revitalising neighbourhoods, preserving the environment, advancing social justice, and sustaining democracy. Therefore, I asked myself the question what is there to be done to positively influence this model and where is it lacking attention at the moment so the bank could respond to this.

In order to meet these societal, environmental needs, my proposal for the national bank of Belgium is to offer opportunities for fostering more equitable and inclusive economic order alongside with the money-based market within the institution. This way the bank typology goes back to its roots and once again becomes a place of exchange for the public. An exchange of values, knowledge, skills, experience, time. The bank accommodates different alternatives of dealing with the value of things. If we are going to actually rethink the economy in our society, then the idea of fostering alternative banking such as time banking, using local currencies, community banking, community funding bartering in the National Bank of Belgium is already a beginning of putting an emphasis on the fact that there is value in other things apart from money.

The national bank becomes an inclusive space without hierarchies where people are welcomed to express themselves, take part into the alternative banking, protest even by being part of the what might be called a city forum. The project for the national bank aims to engage citizens to come together to form communities and to take part in the micro banking. It becomes a transparent and active institution which fosters other monetary systems apart from the money based one. The national bank becomes an active part of the citizen’s daily life and not just for its employees as it was functioning until now.

The Future Bank, the design project for the graduation studio of Interiors Buildings Cities, questions the current role of the National Bank of Belgium withing the city of Brussels, as the institution has distanced itself from the city by the digitalization and outsourcing of former location-bound banking activities. This graduation project, ‘The Future Bank: Designing the Intermediary Space’ addresses the issue by reconnecting the bank building and the city through adopting a more public character. The building is partially transformed into an educational cluster, to house study facilities for students, a library and public archive and the banking museum. Two central courts are created within the building: the auditorium court and a public courtyard. Both of which respond to the direct urban context by bridging the height difference between the banking hall, the main entrance of the building, and the Governor’s Hotel, the most historical building part. The banking hall is transformed into a public interior square which functions as the main entrance for all users and as a foyer and lobby space for the auditorium court and the courtyard. A public route is constructed from the banking hall to the entrance of the Governor’s Hotel, which redraws the boundary between the public and private functions in the building. The design of the intermediary space, the space between the public and private functions, responds to the reconfiguration of the publicly accessible space within the building. By incorporating workspaces and social facilities within the design of the intermediary space, the relation between public and private functions is emphasized. This way, the appropriation of the building and the interrelation of its different users is manifested architecturally on the user-level.

I researched the city planning history of Amsterdam and the specific model of the residential hotel. The research on the characteristics of the Amsterdam canal house and the hofje inspired my proposal of the city hotel. Both the spatial sequence and the operating mode will refer to the traditional hofje. The hotel can be considered as a part of the Raepenhofje and can strengthen the relationship with this community. Like traditional hofjes in Amsterdam, my hotel can also be operated by charity organizations such as art foundation, aiming to provide high-quality studio space and related facilities for artists. The hotel rents out studios to artists and provides them with accommodation.

This years graduation project is set In the city of Amsterdam. A city that has seen an exponential rise in tourist numbers and housing prices. Resulting in a city wide gentrification that made the city undesirable and too expensive for citizens to live in. In an attempt to deal with this the city adopted the doughnut economic model of Kate Raworth in an attempt to create a more inclusive and sustainable city. And with in this context we where asked to design a hotel. Something i found quite ironical, as locals see tourists rather go than that their numbers grow. However that what the crux of the project was. Trying to find a solution where the problem lies, and come up with a new kind of hotel that does more that is short stay counter part now dominating the city. One that contributes to the city instead of taking advantage. For the location of my hotel I choose MR. Visserplein. A central located site, between the old city and the golden belt extension. However its piece of city that is very undefined and where people rather go than stay. The projects complexity lay in two questions. the first being, How can the hotel adapted itself to the mix urban context consisting of pre-20^th- century build buildings (such as, The Mozes and Aron church, the Portuguese synagogue, and the architecture academy, and the 21^st-century film academy)? And how can the hotel deal with the modernist project of the city of Amsterdam that left a subterranean structure under ground? The result is a city block that mends the urban context/tissue of this pieces of Amsterdam and gives a new function to the tunnel underground.

The project rethinks the City Hotel and its accommodation of tourists within Amsterdam. Additionally, the building answers the question of urban densification and building within the historic centre of Amsterdam and revises the social precepts of privilege inherent to the elite architecture of the ‘Binnengasthuis’ area.

‘De Nieuwe Doelen’ constitutes in a social framework functioning as a collective house for diversity, effectively acting as a charitable institution, where twenty four rooms offer a place to students disadvantaged by their ethnicity and the white, secular tradition that exists within University of Amsterdam. The underprivileged citizens are welcomed to build on a grounded community where they are empowered by the architecture and grandeur of the context and recognised as an integral part of the campus, solidifying their position within the university.

The building enacts as a public platform, resonating notions of discourse inherent to the direct historic context. The project uses the fundamental models of the ‘Intimate City’ as a dogmatic approach; the ‘Venetian Campo’, the ‘Urban Loggia’ and the ‘Vienese Café’ inform the collectivity, informality and public permeability of the project. The notions of hospitality and charity, inherent to the morphology of the context, clarify in the social and spatial characteristics of the contextual model of ‘het Gasthuishof’, the Dutch analogical model to the ‘Venetian Campo’, which are inscribed into the tenet of the building.

‘De Nieuwe Doelen’ opens up a sequence of courtyard spaces that exist within the morphology of the ‘Binnengasthuis’ area. The building naturally extends the colonial architecture of the context, yet it reimagines the characteristics of privilege by creating an open and continuous public interior, existing of the continuous topology of the ground floor and basement and a highly permeable plinth to the context. The community floors rise above the gravitas of the construct; a formal public room of discourse where a telescopic seating system constitutes a sense of fluidity, aiding its multiplicity. By agency of intricately organised thresholds, an open and continuous interior is organised, existing of a collective gallery, as a place of residing, and contiguous rooms of privacy, resembling the highly informing model of the Gentlemen’s Club. Throughout the construct, integrated furniture in both collective and private spaces, establish instruments of appropriation. The formality of the social construct, enacting as a blank canvas, awaits appropriation of its inhabitants, awakening the significance of ‘De Nieuwe Doelen’.