Bureau BplusB
Internship August-December 2016
(All images © Bureau BplusB 2015)
This page illustrates the work and projects I was involved with during my internship with Bureau B+B as part of my exchange semester undertaken within the EMiLA masters program. Whilst on exchange at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Amsterdam School of Architecture) I worked during the day in the BplusB office and studied in the evening. This was a very intense experience but I learnt a lot in a short period of time and gained invaluable professional experience at the same time. All images below are those of Bureau B+B and my input to any work is attributed to them.
Warande Zeist
Warande Zeist - Utrecht - Holland - Care Facilty Redevelopment
Warande Zeist presented itself as a useful garden design project from which I have learnt a considerable amount regarding the design process and how architects and landscape architects can work together on a project. Working alongside two other architecture offices who were dealing with the re/design and renovation of the main Warande hospital and care facilities. We were tasked with designing an inner garden that had an area that was public and other areas that connected with the care facilities that were private (for the residents with dementia). The client wanted a design that could differentiate itself from the rest of the estate grounds, creating a different feeling for the visors and users. To achieve this, we proposed a lowered inner garden which meant we could create private areas for the more infirm patients or the patients with dementia who were not supposed to leave the grounds of the care home. Of course proposing lowered areas meant we had to liaise with the architects regularly as these lowered areas had to connect to the buildings. This meant we built up a design dialogue which was interesting to learn from. It was a fluid relationship and process where changes in our design were relayed to the other teams and drawings were updated on shared servers. Another design challenge which led to interesting discussions with the architects was a sheltered walkway feature. We had been asked by the client to make sure the people arriving at the site could have an easy access to the buildings with a sheltered walkway between drop off points and the main front doors. I made many different models to use in discussion with both the client and the architects which worked very well as a simple presentation tool. This project is still on-going but so far I have learnt and covered a lot of work; model making, design work and visuals being my key input.
Kant Park
Duisburg - Germany - Competition Entry
Kant Park in Duisburg, Germany was the first international competition I worked on for BplusB. Soon after making the site visit it was clear that the park was in much need of a re-design and general re-structuring. The park itself housed the Lehmbruck Museum of Sculpture, a high school and a run-down restaurant. The park is also in a dense urban environment, near to the main city train station and local shopping centres. The park however did have a serious issue with local alcoholics and drug users. There was also very little light in the park due to poor tree maintenance and the overgrowing of vegetation. The budget was strictly limited to 1.2 Million Euros and there was no budget for maintenance which heavily limited our design opportunities regarding the vision of the park. With this sum of money we had to propose a design that would ‘change the function’’ of the park and also deal with the prospect of a park with no ‘need’of maintenance. We therefor proposed a simple design that re-positioned the museum as a key element of the park, made a strong central (bench lined) walkway connecting the school area and the main streetscape in the north side of the site and carefully selected certain trees to be removed, allowing for more light into the park. Also proposing to remove the wild shrubs and overgrown vegetation meant a new connection was created with the areas around the park. Creating clear lines of sight through the park would improve the feeling of safety within the park and also address the drug use problem with many of them currently using the dense bushes etc to hide in and use drugs. This was a relatively short design project and as we did not win, my work ended as the competition entry was submitted. My work was focused on drawing sections, base plans and costings. It was a new and interesting experience dealing with the financial side of a project design trying to do as much work within a tight budget. I gained a new understanding in how to deal with this type of project with many restraints and how one as a designer can chose tactically where best to invest time and money and where not to.
Tilburg Dalen Noord
Tilburg - Holland - New Housing Development
The Tilburg Dalen Noord project gave me an insight into how a project can develop and morph whilst remaining loyal to its original conceptual stating points. For this project B+B were asked to design a new housing development on the outskirts of Tilburg that would also have a key connection to the countryside that bordered the site. Another key factor to design was the sound barrier which the developers had insisted on being within the site, blocking noise from the main road that runs along the west of the site. Our original idea was to use a mixture of earth and metal to create a sound barrier that could double as green space within the development. This idea developed and changed as the meetings and project progressed, rather unfortunately we found this space being made smaller and smaller due to the developer trying to squeeze as many houses in as possible. This dialogue did mean that we could use the changes positively and thus re-arranged certain parts of the site to give a more central park green space and instead make a dense wooded sound barrier strip. My main work within this project was to detail the sections and work through the visuals. This was an interesting experience as well due to the changes of these drawings and how they had to be manipulated (with more precision) at each step meaning the final results pleased but us and the client.
