Shaped container
The SKAR building is a genuine shaped container. The regular box is wrapped in the shaped, wrinkled metal shield. This wrinkled surface is a thin membrane between the solid box and the outside world. The SKAR building contains 36 artist’s studios of four types, all 4.80 m from floor to floor. Lower enclosures have opaque panels, upper ones have glass panels. There is a view of the outside world from the entresol. Natural lighting diffuses through a metal fabric in front of the facade. Type A is 100 m2, type B 75 m2, type C 50 m2, type D 25 m2. The prefabricated concrete building system has stiff joints. Piles up to 3 m above ground floor lever bear aloft the rectangular concrete box. On the inner side of the metal shield artists can work in their studio without being disturbed by a specific architectural statement. The folding lines of the wrinkled surface are derived from one of the many impulsive sketches. The sketch is transposed to a three-dimensional grid of attraction points around the rectangular box. Arranged in three rows, the points of the attraction grid are set 60 cm apart from the concrete and glass volume. The zone between the folded facade and the straight box is both a light buffer and a climate buffer. There, the harshness of the light is softened, and the hot and cold assaults on the facade are evened out.
Deisgn team: Ilona Lénárd [facade], Kas Oosterhuis | commissioned by Stichting Kunstenaars Ateliers Rotterdam |1991