CONTAINMENT Kamp Westerbork is the sole structural artifact of a refugee camp turned concentration camp tranist point that existed in the Netherlands during World War II. The house was the home of SS commander Albert Konrad Gemmeker. This example of preservation shows a building captured in time, framed and protected by a glass enclosure. There is no physical connection between the modern intervention and the historic object. In the middle diagram, we see that the viewer is kept at a distance from the object eliminating all but a visual experience of the object. The abstracted timeline of the building’s history (bottom diagram) depicts that the building’s life has been arrested and forced to live within the context of history. The glass becomes a time capsule protecting the building both from deteriorating effects of weather and also the changing contexts of a modern world. The isolation and containment of this particular object create a sense that history and the evils of the past can be neatly contained.
PROTECT The history of this specific object suggests a desire for containment. However, on a purely formal and practical level, this intervention also suggests ways in which we can protect historic objects from natural elements in order to protect structural integrity. This thesis, however, embraces deteroration of objects as part of a building’s lifecycle and continued history, and therfore exposure to existing natural environments and ecosystems is desirable. What is also desired, is a means of protecting objects from visitors in a way that still provides intimate experiences with objects of historical significance. The diagram below shows the relationship between object/protection/visitor inverted to allow for intimate explorations of space.
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