In my recent designs I developed a working method that makes it easier to take decisions. At an early stage of the design I construct a framework in which the concept can develop. This framework consists of a strategy focused on an architectural vocabulary such as form, structure, space, programme and movement. Images are generated by means of translations, a visualization process involving the computer. The hypothetical strategy is then tested against the images. In Str@tegitecture I-IV, this working method produced three designs and a study: Quest for Escape (with J. Ector), a Ronald McDonald House, a transparent facade (the study) and the principal design, a Student Hotel.

Str@tegitecture IV, the Student Hotel, is an autonomous, introvert 'residential island', a site-specific alien, with its own atmospheric entity within the 'island' of Lombok in Utrecht. The design grew out of an encounter between Form and Structure, together with motifs, such as high residential density and collective living, introduced in the strategy by the Flat Flats, a block housing 400 tenants on a footprint of 0.6 hectares. The section through the building was 'morphed' between the side elevations. The main shape was then digitized along Cartesian lines, whereupon the structure, as it were, grew into the form, generating sundry dwelling types. The structure has 18 access points leading either to the cellar or the 'bridge-tunnel' level. The cellar floor, a multiple of concavities, rises mountain-like at an interjacent space up to the three-dimensionally curved galleries. These lead up stairs to the bridge-tunnel level off which are all flat entrances. Inside each flat is a closed circulation circuit designed round the corridor. The longitudinal elevations consist of profiled steel plating with a metallic sheen, the heads of diffusing translucent or reflecting glass. Owing to the shape of the complex and its piercements sunlight plays a prominent role; as in a sundial, the time of both day and year can be read everywhere in the building.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Tutors: Jan Westra, Bert Dirrix, Hans Tupker & Michiel Ham
Specialization: architecture.