Temporary Museum (Lake)

Studio Anne Holtrop's Temporary Museum (Lake), in Heemskerk, near Amsterdam, is a curvaceous form with a lifespan of only six weeks, commissioned to house four landscape-themed artworks for the duration of an exhibition. Inspired by the automatic drawings of Dada artist Jean Arp - in which the hand is allowed to move instinctively across the paper - Holtrop began the design process with spatial sketches intended to "discover form", leading to a fluid organic outline and plan which was extruded upwards to create a single-storey enclosure, open to the elements in parts. With a small budget the structure uses a simple construction sheathed in laminated poplar. Described by Holtrop as an "abstract architecture", the design is halfway between building and model. "There is never a point in which you can consider the form in its entirety, either inside or out", says Holtrop, "so the experience of the building is always relational, and not the experience of an absolute whole". (Quotes from original text)