A temporary shelter for the stranded traveller on their journey to the other side (the future...?)

What if you miss the last boat? O maybe just miss the boat? What if you get stuck? What if an obligatory pause seems to last for ever? If you... desire?

This project takes its cue from my memories of the annual holiday crossing to Schiermonnikoog in the Wadden Sea. Living near the coast of Friesland, I would regularly climb the sea wall to look across to the other side and catch a glimpse of the island. The desire to be there, what at that moment was the unreachable other side, has never left me.

We all carry within ourselves our own unique spaces drawn from our memories. These spaces are stored in the autobiographical memory along life's timeline. Each memory along this line functions as an anchor, lending identity. Architecture then is a defining element for our memories and therefore our identities. Remembering is being underway, on a journey, looking back to be able to look ahead. That act of looking back takes place at moments or intervals along life's timeline. This places the looker in 'in-between' space, the twilight zone between past and future.

For my research I explored my own memories in relation to space and time as well as 'the memory' (in both senses) as a scientific phenomenon. Following up that research, I defined a number of themes relating to memories: reserve space, in-between space, echo, pause, posa, waiting, desire, nostalgia, time. Parallel to this, I examined using film (movement of longing) and clay (the matter of landscape) how these themes figure in the Friesian coastal landscape and in my own inner landscape. These explorations served as a leitmotif in defining the 'in-between' and, accordingly, as mainstays for the Hotel.

In the space between consciousness and subconsciousness, between reality and desire (projection), between arrival and departure, in short in the twilight zone of the 'in-between', that is where Hotel De Boot Gemist is to be found. This hotel is the choreography of longing, a revelation of my inner landscape full of memories and longing, strongly related to the Wadden Sea landscape in which I grew up, but open to each stranded traveller and therefore an invitation to self-reflect.

The intention behind the hotel was to give material form to the imagination and poetry of memories, consisting of fragments, as well as lend direction to the thoughts of the individual, the stranded traveller. It is a step towards regarding this area in another way and a spur to elevating personal experience to a poetic level.

The project is a space mediating between past and future (symbol of the pause) and is assembled from fragments (as in the memory and in memories). It is a space to experience, a space in which each memory is anchored or can be placed. The hotel settled in the old attics of Maastricht railway station, the place between arrival and departure. Here it could be entered by means of an installation, the material manifestation that made it possible to experience immaterial themes rooted in the memory and memories at 1:1 scale. The installation transformed the space, enlarged it, created corridors, rooms, windows, a horizon, related a narrative about a landscape full of longing using collages, clay, ceramics, spatial constructions, video projections, slide projections and audio.

The hotel, as fragmentary as memories, consists of random snapshots in time which are in ongoing transformation (just like memories, which likewise transform during a lifetime). The different fragments engage in dialogue and together compose the hotel. Landscape and stranded traveller alike draw the fragments of the hotel together.

Only the sea forms the physical barrier between 'here and there'. But desire and nostalgia themselves exist on both sides of the water. Hotel De Boot Gemist is now nothing more than a memory...

Place of education: AvB Maastricht | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Birgit de Bruin, Elmar Kleuters, Ingeborg Meulendijks