I made a friend in Rome who lives in Amsterdam. It was really nice to get some advice on the nicest places to go in the city that most tourists might not know about.
She studies at the science park building in De Uithof where we studied most buildings on campus for the entire day. i was pretty inspired by the variety of styles and the boldness of design displayed as a whole. our tour guide explained that the horrible brutalist buildings stay standing so as to show the varying styles ie the whole campus is a timeline exhibiting some of each style of architecture since the 50s.
At first sight i was impressed with the science park building. however according to my friend it doesn't fit its function and seems poorly designed. The building is only one year old and is laughed at by all the pupils. apparently some walls were built in the wrong places by complete mistake shutting off water and electricity to the rest of the building. two people have been knocked unconscious due to misplaced doors! i couldn't believe that one!! lettering above the entrance way are unsafe and ready to fall off after a mere year. one wall wall covered in purple dots (the material i don't know) but the intention was to muffle acoustics. as well as being ugly these dots failed at their purpose and so 60 new walls were built to allow scientists a quiet place to work.
it amazes me how on the surface of things a design can look efficient or the ideas behind them are interesting or innovative. however we can never fully understand if the design is successful unless we are the ones USING the building and being affected by it. its from feedback of those experiencing architecture or from experiencing it yourself that you can make any kind of assessment on a good design. otherwise i don't know what counts as good arcitecture. i find it difficult to choose a favourite for the V&A competition purely because you have to assess where the flaws might be and try to minimise them. these can be difficult to find when looking at a proposal and not being inside the building to see the indiscrepancies.
