Tomas Dirrix
Explorelab
Constructing Romanticism
A Depot in the midst of a Park
This project investigates ‘Romanticism’ as a source and mode for designing and in which architecture is discussed, just like nature and like paintings, as an impression. Capabilities of an architecture as celebration and creation of aesthetic experience are radically re-considered.
Through a comparative study on Romantic imagery, defined in four themes relating to architecture, the appraisal of juxtapositions is being defined as a Romantic design tool. Based on these dimensions various interpretative models and collages were made, as a first exploration of the spatial consequence of this reading.
As a case study a design was made for a Visitors-Depot of the Booijmans Museum in Rotterdam. The design-brief for a closed and cultured volume within the open and natural conditions of a park was recognised as essentially a set of paradoxical circumstances and conditions. The design tests and uses the Romantic tools and notions for making a sensible Architecture.