Archetech - Page 42
Van Gogh Museum's New Entrance
Hans van Heeswijk Architects
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
is one of the Netherlands’ most popular
museums. The ever-growing stream of
visitors required intelligent solutions for
these buildings, which were designed
by Rietveld (1973) and Kurokawa (1999).
The design consists in broad outlines of a
further elaboration of the elliptical wing
of the building that Kurokawa had built
in Amsterdam in 1999. Kisho Kurokawa
Architect and Associates, the firm
founded by the late Kisho Kurokawa and
designer of the temporary exhibitions
wing opened in 1999, prepared the draft
design for the new entrance hall. Hans
van Heeswijk Architects then elaborated
on this to create a solution in which the
existing wing and the new structure form
a surprising new whole.
“Work to move our main entrance to
Museumplein has gone very well,” says
museum director Axel Rüger. “It has been
delivered within the tight eighteenmonth deadline, and on budget. The allglass entrance hall features high- quality
structural engineering and systems.
There is a spacious, well-lit foyer with
cloakrooms and a revamped museum
shop. Improved access, better logistics
and more space will allow us to give our
visitors a much warmer welcome than
before. Moreover, this arrangement
better suits the upgraded Museumplein
– all its cultural institutions now have
their entrances facing the square.The
transparent building with its state-of-theart glass structure enriches both the Van
Gogh Museum and Museumplein.”
State of the art glass constructions:
glass as construction material The new
entrance building is the largest glass
structure in the Netherlands in which
glass fins (beams and mullions) and
double glass units are elements of the
building ́s main structure. This is a major
step forward in the technical innovation
of transparent structures and for glass
as a structural material. There has never
been a longer structural glass fin in the
Netherlands: 12 meters. For the overall
stability of the roof, the glass fins have
been connected to the steel structure.