Roxane van Hoof
Explorelab
The Creditor and The Debtor
The research and design consider the shifting role of the bank in the system of finance and its architecture in parallel to that. Finance developed to an all-pervading institution, which is studied through the historical analysis of the bank, its tasks, responsibilities, in parallel to bank architectures that cover the same period in time. From the research emerged an understanding of finance as the relation between the creditor and the debtor. The project for the Dutch Central Bank in Amsterdam is conceived as a courtyard building, a central open space delimited by an (inhabited) wall, which works as a catalogue of the representational, a collection of representational rooms found through the research. Opposing the creditor, and its physical representation in the Central Bank is the Debtor’s square. Where the creditor is able to maintain and delimit a geometrically unaffected plot, the Debtor’s square is adjusted to its condition, roads cross, trams pass and trees grow.