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| All Photography: Jeroen Musch. |
No budget? No
problem. De Noorderparkbar coffee bar in the Netherlands is made of various upcycled materials
gathered through marktplaats – a Dutch ebay type auction website – and was made
possible from a generous crowd-funding campaign.
Each piece of
the design has a history: from the three rectangular units that have been stacked to
create the L-shaped structure - originally intended to be a temporary hospital - to the wooden shutters – charred using an ancient Japanese
technique called shou sugi ban, to increase their strength and lifespan.
Architects,
Bureau SLA, and spatial designers, Overtreders W, were central to the project,
involving themselves in fund-raising, trading, initialisation, building, as well as the
unique ad-lib design of the building.
“It was
impossible to make a final design beforehand, since what’s on offer at
marktplaats.nl changes continuously," explained the design team. "Only after having bought a certain item,
can one be sure that it’s usable, and then it has to be used.”
Some of the
items gathered include 42 windows, thousands of metres of wood, 55 litres of paint,
two toilets, and mixed green and white ceramic tiles.
What was achieved, then, is an impressively consistent design. What could have been the Frankenstein’s monster of mismatched parts is in fact a frugal and humble cabin that loses none of its charm through austerity - in fact, it only enhances the character. Eye-catching, modern, and natural, yes, but economically roguish and enigmatic.
The wooden shutters open the interior to the North Amsterdam park, and the thrifty use of various sized windows to make a patchwork partition mean this design really could not be replicated in any practical way.
Dutch linguists
can read some of the tales behind the building's resources at www.hetkomtaltijdgoed.nl.
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