Annabel Rodriguez
De architectuur van mijn herinneringen
The architecture of my memories
Imagination in the case of the transformation of a vacant farm in Amstelveen
Remembering is very personal and therefore unique. Everyone has his or her own references, perceptions and experiences, even when people experience the same event at the same time. Early memories, seen through the eyes of a child, change into a story, while later memories remain susceptible to new interpretations.
If memories are strongly connected with our emotions, how do you make room for memories in that case? With this plan, I am searching for the connection between my personal memories from my Cuban childhood and architecture. After I understood and identified the different aspects of memories, I decided to transform these into tangible spaces. The stage for that translation was an abandoned farm in Amstelveen with large barns. I have transformed the farmyard into a community with strong social cohesion. In this way, it has become a manifesto for the actual cohabitation that I know from my early childhood. Moreover, it shows a way of dealing with urgent challenges: the conversion of vacant farms into places to live in the Netherlands. It is important to allow imagination to play a role with these kinds of transformations in particular.
By incorporating my memories into the design process, an interplay of the different memories and their influence arises. I translated this based on the existing materials from three large barns in Amstelveen. On the basis of my own memories and the history of the location itself, I transformed this forgotten farm into a new circular residential environment.
The relationship between the landscape and the different memories became the guiding factor in the design. Through the powers of imagination, the new spaces and surroundings will be connected with each other in this new reality. The individual, in a fluid state of togetherness and solitude, experiences the spatial richness and the different spaces through routing, syntax and incidence of light.
Graduation committee: Henri Borduin (mentor), Hanneke Kijne en Paul van Dijk.
Additional members for the exam: Ira Koers en Jolijn Valk.