1517_HERENTALS
police station and art campus
- Location :
- Herentals
- Client :
- City of Herentals
- Team :
- AgwA
- Subcontractors :
- JZH + Daidalos Peutz
- Planning :
- 2016
- Category :
- Competition
Historically, the city of Herentals is an important node in the network of cities and villages in the Kempen region.
A double-faced intervention is staged by a multi-headed client: the city, the police and two art campuses. The design question is put forward in a simple, clear cut way: how do we incorporate a police station and an art campus in a modernist office building which scale surpasses any building in Herentals? How do we transform it into a public building? There is a certain beauty and sustainability in the aberration of the idea of a corpus that doesn't seem to fit in.
We decide early on to re-use as much as we can of the existing arrangement. The programmatic entities are meticulously placed within the existing generous structure. We open up the ground floor for the public: horizontal cut-outs offer a multitude of views and connections. The only real addition structures the art garden, which connects the building with the heart of the city, forms the central place of interconnection and exchange.
A double-faced intervention is staged by a multi-headed client: the city, the police and two art campuses. The design question is put forward in a simple, clear cut way: how do we incorporate a police station and an art campus in a modernist office building which scale surpasses any building in Herentals? How do we transform it into a public building? There is a certain beauty and sustainability in the aberration of the idea of a corpus that doesn't seem to fit in.
We decide early on to re-use as much as we can of the existing arrangement. The programmatic entities are meticulously placed within the existing generous structure. We open up the ground floor for the public: horizontal cut-outs offer a multitude of views and connections. The only real addition structures the art garden, which connects the building with the heart of the city, forms the central place of interconnection and exchange.
