03 Innovation lab

Assignment : Create a design for the Netherlands' largest open-air theatre, De Barst in Steendam, as part of the Kultuureiland development. Demonstrate your acquired skills and knowledge by creating a unique integral architectural design.

Problem statement : Creating a unique design that fits an growth model and starts with approximately 2000 visitors and be expandable to 5000 visitors. Also the design most do something with the current situation in Groningen with the earthquakes.

To create a growth model me and my teammate tried and figure out what kind of forms we could use to make this happen and we figured out that connecting circles instead of an traditional tribune might work.

Our guiding theme soon became frozen methane bubbles as this is the gas that is extracted from the ground and creates the earthquakes.

These rough sketches show how me and my teammate attempted to figure out what the stage should look like. The final design will become clear in the upcoming pages, but these nicely show the design process we went through while deciding on the final stage design and how we decided on how to organize the tribunes and the facilities within them.

After experimenting with different forms I’ve made a growth model in Archicad to show the possibilities in visitors capacity.

The so called “bubbles” at first seemed to be a very good solution but we needed to tackle one major problem, and that is the accessibility of the higher bubbles. After several brainstorming session and a lot of experimenting different possible solutions, we came to the conclusion to create stairs underneath the tribune to make them accessible. A pro of this solution is that the stairs are hidden under the construction and the guiding theme stays intact due to the contrast between the bubbles that will not be intervened.

In the next few slides the design of the building is shown in renders and materialisation.

Tall dark glass windows

And black mirrors

Light concrete tribunes and oak scafolding

Dark tiles and light stones