New station and city hall for Delft
Mecanoo architects came up with this combined railway station and city hall for Delft, a small and otherwise picturesque city near Rotterdam. The ceiling in this photo is made of Delftware. I am thinking: hobbit on crack with a porcelain fetish, but hey, to each their own. I am certainly not adverse to good ceiling porn, this just doesn’t seem to be it. The railway is going partly underground in order to connect the two city halves, which I think is a good idea.
A couple of years ago the city council figured they had an image problem (Dutch), and spent 1 million euro of tax payer’s money to make it go away. One of the solutions they seem to have found was to make Delftware more prominent (Dutch).
For comparison, here’s the current railway station:
(Photo of the new station by Mecanoo. Photo of the old station by Markv, some rights reserved. Bright says building will start in 2010.)
I like a lot of the architecture including the new building but I don’t understand why the old train station building must be destroyed. Keep the old artifice and put it to good use. Build the new one adjacent.
… And a happy Independence Day to Americans and happy July to the fans of the Tour de France. Go Astana! Which riders are the favorite riders of the Dutch?
PS. do the authors at 24 Oranges tweet? If so, you could list your tweet ID on this blog and we could follow you.
@1, It doesn’t look like the old station is going to be destroyed. Image 7 on the architect’s web page shows the old building to the left.
@2, hard to tell. I haven’t been following the cycling recently, so I don’t really know who’s who, and whether I am going to be much disappointed if I start rooting for them.
@3, I don’t twitter.
@4@1 thanks for looking at the plan and sharing that info. best.
Indeed, “to each their own.” In typical Dutch fashion, there are going to be critics chiming in, yea or nay, about the plan. Looking at the plan photos (on the link, too), I think it’s a bit overkill with the traditional Delft blue. Did anyone think of orange, too? Delft has an historical connection with the House of Orange.
True. Willem van Oranje, father of the fatherland, got killed there. :-)
Basically, they are going to build a volume that is at least ten or twenty times bigger than the existing train station. It is going to eat up the space in the front of the station, where currently you can find the bus stops (where do they end up?) and the free bicycle parking (and there are a LOT of bykes there, trust me).
This looks like a rather monstrously large architectural presence for a town like Delft, where (excepting church spires) most buildings are quite small. Mecanoo, who has also designed the wonderful TUDelft library, describes it as “a more urban front to the Westvest”. It is certainly going to be more urban. It is also going to really chocke the Westvest.
Notice also that this is a station + municipal offices. If this were Italy, I would start looking for the real estate deals happening around wherever the municipal offices are currently.