The design to expand the Bauhaus Academy in Weimar derives from a competition programme. The brief asked entrants how they would approach the twin issues of a historically charged past and the demands made by an academy today. This scheme refrains from seeking the answer in new dogmas. These are anachronisms in an age when theoretical inroads on architecture are changing ever more rapidly. Accordingly, the academy building designed here makes space for new developments. The trend towards rapid change is rendered in the way the workshops and the theory classrooms suspended in them, are experienced spatially. The membrane of the theory rooms consists of liquid glass whose clearness can vary from transparent to opalescent.

The existing villa to be retained is conserved by having a bell jar placed over it. For its part the existing academy building has been gutted to receive new functions, though leaving visible the imprints of wall partitions and floors. On the site of the villa to be demolished will come the library. As it doesn't have a roof this memory bank will inevitably suffer from amnesia, necessitating that whatever snippets of information remain, should be continually reinterpreted, implying a future of constant renewal. The tug-of-war set up between the various design approaches within the complex will be fuel for the inevitable discussions, in which points of view are bound to change over time.

Place of education: Arnhem
Tutors: Mart Reijs, Wim Korvinus & Lucas Verweij
Specialization: architecture