Description

The former Dominican monastery, which was used for military purposes for almost two centuries and has been slowly decaying since 1975, is located on the northern edge of the old town of Mechelen in Belgium, right next to the city wall and directly adjacent to the new Holocaust Museum built a few years ago next to the former Dossin barracks. From its roof terrace one has a good view of the building area. After decades of slow dilapidation, the building had acquired a very special atmosphere, which immediately captivated the architects Rien Korteknie and Mechthild Stuhlmacher when they first set eyes on the complex. The partial flaking of the surfaces had produced a new simultaneity of 300 years of layers of time, fusing them, along with the cracks, into a new image. The impression was so compelling that the Rotterdam architect duo decided to employ its design potential and accept the different layers of time as equally important ingredients of this atmospheric image. As such, the question of which age should be deemed the “original state” of the building never arose.

The reconstruction concentrated on the monastery quadrangle, a decision that had the significant advantage of being able to visually and acoustically separate the different areas that modern libraries need to provide – quiet study areas, a noisier children’s library, individual and group work areas, conference rooms, exhibition areas, meeting zones and a cafeteria. The building structure provided the ideal conditions for creating separate zones to cater for different needs: not only could functions be distributed across three floors but also in the plan, with the inner ring of the cloister being more sacred in character and the outer ring more profane. The ground floor is designed as a “near zone” with a small informal café in the former cloister and a more dignified restaurant in the outer ring of rooms. Half-height panelling in the rooms conceals the technical equipment and fittings required for these new functions and also provides acoustic insulation and air conditioning. The floor, which was not worth preserving, was also replaced, allowing the underfloor space to be used for further services. Polished black stone paving was installed as a historically suitable material in consultation with the conservation authorities.

The architect Mechthild Stuhlmacher is keen to point out the difference between their approach and that of, say, Hans Döllgast at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich or David Chipperfield at the Neues Museum in Berlin: the cloister conversion in Mechelen is driven more by atmospheric considerations than an obligation to preserve history. This was partly due to the fact that centuries of military use had left little of artistic value in the cloister and partly a factor of the budget, which, needless to say, was a fraction of that available to Chipperfield in Berlin. This approach becomes particularly clear on the first floor which houses the study library in the “deep zone”. Here Korteknie and Stuhlmacher have not limited themselves to presenting what was found as a spatial framework: fungal and pest infestation made it necessary to remove the original plaster ceiling, revealing the timber construction beneath. The architects elected to leave this is as the upper surface of the space. As on the ground floor, the floor on the second storey makes reference to materials from times past, though here the floor slabs are matt, and some are sourced from France. The furniture and fittings throughout the building were designed by the architects and made predominantly of solid oak.

The highlight of the library, however, is without doubt the roof space – a space shaped neither by monastic or military use and therefore ideally suited for a public building that aims to be as inclusive as possible. To create a connection between the reading room and the urban surroundings, Korteknie and Stuhlmacher inserted large, angular dormers into the new roof. From outside, they are a distinctive feature of the building but inside they are virtually invisible: the dimensions of the historical oak beams of the roof trusses, as well as the new steel reinforcement above them, prevent one from seeing them when looking down the room. Although the impressive timber roof structure spans the entire building width, the position of the inner and outer rings of the floors below is still evident in the position of the supports. Picking up this line, the architects have inserted a gallery that creates new visual relationships and spatial situations in the roof and also make it possible to place workspaces on one side and bookshelves on the other, or vice versa. The roof is constructed as a highly insulated “hat” placed over the existing structure, while the walls beneath have not been insulated so as not to conceal the “narrative” of their surfaces, which can be seen from outside, from the town or garden courtyard, or be deciphered by the library’s visitors from the reading spaces within.

Originally published in Bauwelt 18.2020, pp. 46-53, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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