'Promotion is the most thick-skinned parasite in our culture. It would undoubtedly survive a nuclear conflict. It is our Last Judgement.'
Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1995).

In an age where meta-narrative structures have disappeared and image and meaning no longer relate, Bush preaches on Good and Evil. While the US was struggling with the Enola Gay controversy, Couzy defended the image of the army at the expense of truth during the Srebrenica inquiry. The army finds itself in a schizophrenic position where image culture and ethics collide.

In contemporary architectural practice too, meaning plays second fiddle while image culture is going solo with formalistic architecture. I don't wish to be an architectural idealist, but like the sceptics I want to show the ambiguity of the arguments.

The army museum is located at the crossroads of the regional Lelylaan and the locally oriented J.P. Huizingalaan in Amsterdam West. West is constantly portrayed by the media not only as a district symbolizing the failure of the post-war social utopia, but also as a society in which new ethnic groups are undermining the political and cultural consensus. But West is also a district where an increasing number of young people are striving for a new urban culture in the vast quantities of undefined public space. The collective element of public space has shifted to private organizations like the Hema chain store and McDonalds. Van Eesteren's district is searching for a potential authentic identity as a reaction to the centralized identity of Amsterdam. Without falling for the idea of a new makable projection, I sought to reformulate public reality by destabilizing recognizable modernistic elements.

The army museum is a paradoxical building; it is a constructed statement of an autonomous culture that sets off in search of its meaning in a constantly self-reinventing urban culture. The museum is a composition of meanings, where both visitor and function question their position. Functions of different meaning like the army surplus shop and the recruiting office meet in one building to attract differing target groups.

On an architectural level ambiguity is represented through classic modernist elements, such as an autonomous box and a grid, alongside post-modern elements. The result is a game played between the uniformity of the principles and the destabilizing effect of varying rhythms and wayward impulses.

The programme is divided into four strategies: museum, experience, shopping and public spaces. Each strategy, with its own symbolic idiom, is a representation of how the army is involved in everyday life. The spaces of experience are objects that swirl through the building, while the shopping spaces communicate through two-dimensional walls. The museum spaces, which are all about interpreting the exhibits, are organized along curatorial routes punctuated by subcultural public places. The public spaces and facades relate to the local as well as the regional level and illustrate the presence of 'mass-cultural war' as an element of daily life. The museum visitor recognizes, absorbs, disengages and regroups.

War is usually justified in terms of identity politics. Those same identity politics are the basis of the struggle of Amsterdam, Amsterdam West, its young Moroccan residents and the army itself. As in a roleplay, the museum negotiates the possibility of transforming these politics with respect to army and museum visitors alike.

The Last Judgement is up to You!

Place of education: TU Delft
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Christoph Grafe, Mikel van Gelderen, Sven Steiner, Alan Brookes, Ronald Janssen