Transformatorium can best be described as a dramatic park, its components stitched together by a number of parcours. It is sited in Maastricht on the St. Pietersberg, a major cultural monument to one of the oldest forms of mining in this country and now a tourist attraction. The design takes its cue from three urban squares (Markt, Onze Lieve Vrouwe Plein and Vrijthof). They are rendered as three places of power: respectively, worldly and profane, spiritual and cosmic, and down-to-earth and of the people. The parcours are constructed as a labyrinthine network of galleries where space is exploited as a game of 'visual enlightenment'. The main theme in Transformatorium is (re)discovering the city. An educational means of exploring various aspects of urbanity, it generates and orders the experiences characteristic of cities and presents them to each visitor.

The entrance building consists of a route off which are an information centre, theatres, a restaurant and suchlike. The worldly, profane power gains shape in an experimental theatre representing the 'underworld'. From this entrance area the visitor can enter a vertical passage leading down to the network of galleries carved in the layers of limestone.

The Square of Spiritual Power is rendered as an extendable library of two archives. In the dynamic archive the visitor is confronted with the culture and history of the city of Maastricht in a vigorous progression from past to present. The static or municipal archive is the core of the library, a spiralling movement back through time.
The Square of People's Power is a place to regain your bearings, where the essence of the human soul shifts steadily from the physical to the mental. It divides into two spaces one above the other, the place of agitation and the place of quiescence.

The network of galleries is so deepened that it reaches the limits of the limestone mining. Transformatorium reanimates the labyrinthine system by attaching new use forms to it. It is a first step towards developing this area of Maastricht, one which might cause the dramatic park to expand further.

Place of education: Maastricht
Specialization: architectuur/architecture
Tutors: Frank van der Linden, Siebe Bakker & Elmar Kleuters