Mental Health Centre Hembrug

Abstract

This graduation project is focused on a transformation of industrial heritage in Campus North in Hembrug, a former closed-off military production terrain on a peninsula in Zaandam. For a long time the terrain was used by the Artellerie-Inrichtingen for the production and manufacturing of weapons and ammunition for the Dutch army. After the companies left the area, the area became vacant and nature took over the area. Now it is an oasis of rest where time has been standing still. The area is located in the metropolitan area of Amsterdam. This is an area where people are mentally and physically suffering under a lot of stress en pressure which resulting in overstraining, depressions and burnouts. In the graduation project the ensemble is transformed into a GGZ complex where people can be treated and residence who suffer from these mental illnesses. The machine hall will get the new function of a treatment centre combined with a small theatre and the Weapon depot will be transformed into an open residential community. In the graduation project is researched with a design how Campus North can be transformed into this complex where people can be treated in a protected environment without losing the connection with the rest of Hembrug. The goal was to create this most intimate space without a feeling of imprisonment. This is done by using multiple layers of protection on different scale levels, where every level has still a connection with the adjacent layers. In the elaboration of the project is focused on how different research and design elements work in complementary way to substantiate the project. There is search for a way of thinking where multiple aspects can benefit from each other. By looking at a project from this point of view architecture can work in a complementary way instead of a supplementary. Especially in heritage the new intervention can work as a symbiosis. The old and the new interact with each other and both achieve benefits from each other. In this way of thinking, one plus one is not two, it is three. The DNA of the old Building, his heritages, merges with the DNA of the new intervention and in this way new architecture is created with an even greater value.