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Ideas Store - Rotterdam

Part 2 Project 2007
Chris Seviour
University of Huddersfield | UK
The Ideas Store proposed for Rotterdam addresses the uncertainty of the global future. It acknowledges that rising sea levels would drastically change the context, and so the architecture considers a radically different future

The scheme is sensitive to these changes, allowing for an architectural response which is flexible to the anticipated differences in micro-climatic conditions and to the building's utility over a 200 year period

The building operates with the landscape, allowing for process driven forms which intensify as events occurs. The existing context is manipulated by the water and so process determines the duration and extent of the experience.

Chris Seviour


This project for an Ideas Store in Rotterdam has been short listed by the School because of its highly original response to the dynamics of context. It exposes one of the fundamental dilemmas of architectural design; the balance between intention and prediction. Through an exploration of an architecture spanning a great swathe of time, the student's thesis steps outside the bounds of routine functionality and tends to predict rather than dictate. It alludes allegorically to decay and renewal and reveals itself as an architecture of process, rather than product. It questions the notions of permanence and change.

2007
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