Since 2015, a listed school building on the Hortusplantsoen in Amsterdam has been home to the Reinwardt Academy. This educational institution, with a focus on museology and cultural heritage, is part of the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Architecture
Diana Ugnat focused on the domain Architecture and investigated the influence of the redesign on the DNA of the existing building. The fact that the Reinwardt Academy is a public building proved to be an asset. “Our group was given a tour and staff provided important information about the original building from 1896 and the changes that were made before it was renovated in 2012 according to the design of Annette Marx. We then discussed our findings with our tutors. Annette provided us with information about her redesign. We also did archival research and even watched old movies to compare old and new situations. Our research made it clear that many changes had been made to the building before it was renovated in 2012.”
To create more space and increase the usability of the building for students and staff, the architect proposed, among other things, to remove a roof structure on the ground floor between the façades of adjacent buildings – originally two adjacent primary schools – and instead to bring the brick facades to the same level with new masonry, connect them with a curtain wall and add a roof structure made of zinc and glass. In addition, by creating new openings in the façades on the ground floor, a new, light and accessible central courtyard has been created. “Like the architect, we found out that the covered courtyards were originally external. Marx has chosen to bring back the spatial quality of these original spaces with interventions that respect the original character of the building. However, interviews with teachers and students showed that some educational spaces were not or poorly used because temperatures are too high in the summer and too low in winter.”
Diana awarded Marx’s work the highest score – blue – while the architect herself awarded yellow. “I mainly looked at the impact of the new roof and the improved function of the central courtyard, while Annette regards the contrast between the building typology and the redesign as a reason for a lower score. She also took into consideration that her redesign for the entrance was not carried out.” Diana now applies her CRASH experience and the method of analysis during her internship. “The fact that in addition to the requirements of the new use, the history of a building can motivate your design choices was an eye-opener for me. It is good not only to be intuitive, but to be able to support design choices with a thorough analysis.”
Sustainability
Teammate Lars Bouter chose the Sustainability domain. According to the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM-NL), a tool for measuring the sustainability of buildings, the renovated academy scores high in several categories, including ecological value. Lars was stirred by a piece on the website of the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten which claims that the redesigned building and its green space improve the ecological quality of Amsterdam’s city centre. “This sounded too good to be true. I wanted to research more extensively to see if this really is the case. However, collecting adequate solid data turned out to be harder than I thought.”
In the ten weeks of the course he visited the site three times and spoke to, among others, the building manager, who proved to be a mine of information. “He knows a lot about the building and the place and is responsible for the management of the garden. He was so enthusiastic about the BREEAM research that he joined the bat counting at night.” Bouter also Googled relevant research reports. “For example, I tried to find out species and numbers of birds before the renovation and looked at this location in relation to the natural qualities of the area.” At its rear, the Reinwardt Academy has a garden: an outdoor area with trees. The property is located in a relatively green part of the city, next to a park, opposite the Hortus Botanicus and within walking distance of Artis Zoo. “As yet no connections have been created that are beneficial to ecological quality or biodiversity. Annette Marx suggested ideas of a green line of sight through the building complex, but they have not been picked up until now.”
Lars previously took courses on built heritage to understand how transformation assignments can be executed. He says he finds old buildings more interesting than new ones anyway. “If a place has history, you should use it to give the old a new life. Through this course I have become more aware that the natural value of a place or object is part of that history. A designer should also appreciate that aspect in a transformation task.” He assessed the redesign of this domain with green. “The architect awarded the same colour, but for the overall domain Sustainability. That doesn't make the results very comparable.”