What role does architecture play when the social pressure in our complex and layered society is pumped up? What is the interaction between architecture and event? Prompted by J.G. Ballard's novel 'High-Rise' these questions have been worked up into the design for a tower block at a fictitious urban location. The programme is comprised of some 1000 dwellings, a sports complex, a school, a permanent marketplace, a swimming pool and various commercial use forms including shops, cafés/restaurants and a cinema.

In our society we are bombarded with information. This is collected by the community, filtered and placed in a new context. This gives rise to images of an ever greater information density, in which I recognize a form of complexity. In chaos theory, complexity is described as a phase which arises when order turns to chaos. Our society is a complex system and architecture has no option but to take account of this fact.

The pressure in the tower block is increased by organizing the density of inhabitation and the variety among activities in such a way that their reciprocal relationships achieve a 'critical mass'. The space is so manipulated that it works as an interaction on the one hand and as a buffer zone on the other so as to allow the different programme components to function. The design has the form of an atrium building in which the atrium functions as a public area, with the housing units acting as an intermediary between it and the city. The tower, embedded in its context as a vertical slab of city, functions as a reactor in which architecture can change the event and the event can change architecture.

Place of education: AvB Tilburg
Specialization: architectuur
Tutors: Pnina Avidar, Martien Jansen & Arjen Oosterman