Name: Vincent Heijnen
Track: Architecture
Studio: Architectural Design Crossovers
Year: MSc1 / 2024-2025
Type: Design project
Tutor: Alper Semih Alkan, Cecilé Calis, Ruurd Kuijlenburg
Description:
Materials Archive proposes an integrated approach to a complicated site, embracing ideas about context and narrative to coordinate aspects of sustainability, historical importance and practical functions.
The project site: Convoys Wharf has historical importance due to its role as a shipbuilding dockyard during Britain's colonial era. The aim of my project is to address this history through the lens of materiality and techniques so that visitors, professional designers and students can bring forward awareness of the contexts and narratives surrounding this in a tangible way into their lives and projects. This is accomplished architecturally through the adaptation of vernacular techniques: reclaimed brick arches, slipway five timber truss system, and ship building technologies to illustrate the emotive, sustainability and practical benefits of adopting traditional approaches in modern architecture. The Materials Archive provides spaces for seminars, workshops, exhibitions, research, testing, collaboration, archaeological investigation and material production so it acts as a centre point for traditional material research, innovation and production across many industries.