architecture openness, and sensitively and esthetically fulfilling the challenging brief, which was to create spatial relief on the roof on the VU Hospital. The Kinderstad uses Nature as the Healing Element as a theme, to bring the outdoors in. Spaces were loosely defined to be filled in by the imagination of the children themselves. The project was unique in that a concept was executed and that too as close as possible to the original. The entire team on the project had to rigorously coordinate with the simultaneous renovation of the hospital floors below. Structure, services, gas pipelines, etc. from the floors below had to be continued above and integrated into the design. The project team at the hospital comprised the technical team from the hospital, doctors with insight into medical needs, representatives of the Ronald McDonald Foundation, the sponsors and co-client.
VU Kinderstad | Location: Amsterdam, 2004- Sept. 2007 The stringent brief and budget was reinterpreted to create spatial relief on the roof on the VU Hospital. The double-decker pavilion with open flowing spaces is characterized by a large internal amphitheatre. The pavilion construction is light and transparent compared to the heavy, brick hospital below. This glass pavilion atop the roof extends the space inside to the sky and the nearby woods, and brings the outdoors in. The functional spaces are clad in different elements of nature,to create an outdoorsy feel within. Project credits: Sponge Architects & Rupali Gupta i.s.m. I.O.U Architecture
Who has been your inspiration in the field of architecture? RG: There are many! Japanese architects like Shigeru Ban who show what humble paper can do. They innovate and extend traditional Japanese techniques of building with paper to modern large span structures. There’s Zaha Hadid, for the thoroughness and integrity of an ideology www.poolmagazine.in  49