BDES1020 Continuous City <Koon Kau Ho>

Abstract

The building is a cultural library. It is a library which contains books that related to the culture of Amsterdam. Amsterdam Cultural Library will be a landmark in this city because it is a modern building which will have a big contrast with the surrounding old style buildings. The shape of the building comes with an idea that some books being pulled out from a bookshelf. These pulled out spaces are supposed to be some reading areas for the people to read after they grab a book or magazine or something from central area of the library. Moreover, they can have computer access in some areas of the building. About the cladding of the building, the materials that I use for cladding are mainly glasses with some translucent plastic and some metal strips. The reason that I choose glass is because Amsterdam is a kind of “open in mind” city. It seems there is nothing to hide from peoples’ eyes. But, indeed, when you get to know more about Amsterdam. There is something people want to cover up. Something they don’t want you to know at all. That’s why I choose translucent material in some area of the cladding. You can see a bit what is going on in the library but not 100%. The reason I choose metal strips is because these strips represent four different aspects of Amsterdam. They are in four different colors- red, purple, yellow and green. Red represents violence in Amsterdam. Purple represents water in Amsterdam. Yellow represents aesthetics side of Amsterdam. Green represents the vegetation in Amsterdam. In a sense, the metal strips are pretty chaotic in terms of position, but they are all pointing at same direction. It is just kind of like Amsterdam, you can see chaos of the Amsterdam but that chaos is in orders.