New Structuralism
This project sets out to show that the themes of Structuralism, the architectural tendency of the 1960s, such as the drive to duality and complex configurations, are still relevant.¹ No architecture has explored the need for duality so thoroughly as Structuralism. The project seeks to overcome the lack of diversity by giving primacy to a more personal and 'self-regulating' manner of experiencing buildings. A vital component of this shift is the moment of transition. Every transition presupposes the presence of a transformation, for example the transformation from spirited to leisured or fast to slow. It is at moments like these that the building is endowed with meaning. In present-day fitness centres² these moments of transition are certainly there but are never designed as such.

On the Maas
This fitness centre sits alongside the River Maas in the park at the Euromast. Incorporated in an existing dyke, it looks out over both river and park. The project's form and organization are based on an in-depth analysis of forms of spaces and the ways such spaces interact. The study was carried out with the help of scale models, in which such features as direction and form of walls and floors, light and views, were systematically subjected to change. The findings of this analysis have been deployed to design a fitness centre with a diversity of spatial experiences. The result is a spatial constellation of radically differing places. It is these differences that can shape one's personal sense of space.

'[Architecture should be seen] as a configuration of intermediary places clearly defined. This [...] implies a break away from the contemporary concept (call it sickness) of spatial continuity and the tendency to erase every articulation between spaces' [...].
Aldo van Eyck

1 - This in contrast to Ed Taverne who claims that the Team 10 legacy has no relevance today; see Architectuurkrant, 2005 no. 3 (NAi).
2 - The fitness centre can be seen as the pre-eminent model of present-day one-sidedness.

Place of education: AvB Rotterdam
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Ludo Grooteman, Johan de Koning, Gerrit Schilder jr., Duzan Doepel