A screen-printed glass market hall by MVRDV
The Dutch architects MVRDV are known for sparking debate, questioning us and challenging received ideas. They have done it again with this urban glass hall in the town of Schijndel in the Netherlands.
Winy Maas, one of the three founding architects of MVRDV, comes from this town of 23,000 inhabitants north of Eindhoven. Since his youth he has campaigned for a more coherent treatment of the church square within the town, as a letter he wrote to the then mayor at the age of 20 shows. It took 23 years for his campaign to be heard by the town council. Today, the architects are delivering their seventh proposal, the glass farm.
The building responds to the demand for urban integration that characterises our age and its regulations. The architects followed the maximum volume permitted by the Dutch local planning rules, which itself echoed the form of the local farmhouses. Taking the call for integration a step further, the architects simply reproduced the façades of a standard farmhouse as a screen print on glass, but enlarged by a factor of 1.6 so as to contain the brief and fill the permitted envelope.
The façade was produced with the help of the photographer Frank van der Salm, who photographed a large number of traditional local farmhouses to arrive at a typical model. This was then reproduced on the glazing, with areas of the print left clear to create the actual openings.
The 1,600 m² building houses small shops, restaurants, a wellness centre and offices. At 14 metres high, it symbolises the migration of the farm to the village. Through this change of scale, seen from the outside, the adult becomes a child again.
Gallery
6 images- © Persbureau van Eijndhoven
- © MVRDV
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