Unknown makes unloved
T.M. Gentenaar (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Joana Gonçalves – Mentor (TU Delft - Heritage & Technology)
FWA Koopman – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Heritage & Technology)
WJ Quist – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Heritage & Technology)
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Abstract
The past year I have delved into field of built heritage in the context of my graduation project which consist of a redesign of a vacant police station and a related research. The redesign of the police station is part of a larger reorganization within the police. In 2013 the police was reorganized to form a national police force and currently they are adapting their real estate to this reorganization. As the police is dedicated to sustainable real-estate development the Atelier Politiebouwmeester has asked the Vacant Heritage studio to study the future of these buildings.
The studio focusses on the role of vacant heritage for a more sustainable future. Within this studio, the Touch & Feel research line, studies the materiality of buildings and the essential values these material attributes represent, in regard to the possibilities for adaptive reuse. With this approach in mind, I started my graduation project with a focus on the possible heritage values the police station conveyed. An extensive study into the work and influence of the architect of the police station, Berghoef, substantiated the heritage value of the police station (see ‘Understanding Berghoef’). The subsequent value assessment of the station showed which attributes of the police station most clearly convey its value.
Various building and site analysis indicated that a possible future use of the police station was education. The ambition of University College Roosevelt to expand, meant an interesting opportunity for a new life for the police station. The required program however, did not fit within the existing building. This encouraged to look beyond the initial project scope and see how the adjacent vacant supermarket could be incorporated in the design. It resulted in a plan where the redesign of the police station is a driver for the redevelopment of larger piece of city as small-scale campus.
It meant that a large part of the plan would be new buildings. To find out how to link them to the existing building of Berghoef, an inventory of existing redesign strategies, several case-studies into redesigned Berghoef buildings and many design experiments were performed. Simultaneously I explored how the police station is an example of many modest valued buildings in our country and how to redesign them for a sustainable future. The conclusion, as substantiated in the paper: ‘The quality of modest valued buildings’ is that when redesigning unlisted twentieth century buildings, three factors are of equal importance: Heritage value preservation, meeting contemporary demands and sustainability. By preserving the attributes which most essentially convey the heritage value of the building, and taking more freedom to do interventions which allow a sustainable new use, this can be achieved. A side note on this conclusion is that this approach worked well for this building because the heritage attributes were the façade and floors. These are elements which are easy to preserve in case of a new use. Other attributes are perhaps more related to functionality of a building. In this case the new use has to find ways to adapt to this.