The Rene van Zuuk Architekten bureau was founded in 1993, however, relatively recently, and there are not so many built buildings in its portfolio - the brightest objects are located in Amsterdam and two small towns Almere and Rosendal. Rene van Zyuk is not a star of world architecture that they like to amaze the Moscow public with, and behind his shoulders there are no bright victories in international competitions, his own instantly recognizable brand and media hype. He is, one might say, a simple true Dutch architect, one of those who brought the Netherlands to the forefront of world architecture. At his lecture in Moscow, Rene van Zyuk shared the secrets of his professionalism and talked about the method thanks to which all his constructions of curvilinear and convex-concave shapes become reality.
Even 15 years ago, it was almost impossible to implement digital architecture objects created with the help of a computer - engineers and designers simply did not imagine how to reproduce the "fluid" forms of such buildings in the material. Even today, the genre of fluid architecture is perceived rather as a field for the implementation of iconic objects or follies, but in no way mass buildings intended for housing or work. But Rene van Zyuk knows how to make this direction of modern architecture "suitable" for solving a variety of social problems. Digital forms, in his opinion, are ideal for the construction of residential apartments, exhibition pavilions and office complexes. Rene van Zyuk calls the method that allows to implement such objects quickly and inexpensively systemic design and in all seriousness explains that he borrowed it from … the designer of his little daughter.
To explain the structural layout of his buildings, van Zyuk actually showed the audience slides of two children's construction sets. One of them is the well-known Lego, from which you can build a variety of surfaces, but only at right angles. The second, on the contrary, is based on "nodes", into the grooves of which you can stick guides at several angles and build spatial, but hollow inside the structure. The combination of both principles and gave van Zyuk the engineering and constructive basis for the implementation of the most complex curved facades.
The architect told about how a standard rectangular volume is gradually acquiring the proprietary “Vanzyuk” outlines using the example of the Block 16 residential complex built in Almera. As a basis, they really took the most economical that can be thought of - reinforced concrete boxes. If you put them on top of each other, you get an ordinary residential block, and in order to give the volume of the features of fluid architecture, its structure needs to be deformed. This is where van Zyuk gets down to business: for example, he changes the length of the cells so that they gradually extend, forming a wavy facade, and then selects a suitable "skin" for this bizarre frame, plastic enough to fit all the resulting "irregularities". But its plasticity does not lie in the material - the most common aluminum is used here - but in the structure of joining the panels. They partially overlap one another, forming something like scales, which from one angle of view looks like the crest of a wave, from another - like the skin of a bristling brontosaurus. Presenting this object, van Zyuk has repeatedly emphasized that the value of the house has not increased much from all these refinements. But to be honest, we should nevertheless note that this residential complex on the coast of the bay does not belong to the category of cheap, since it was originally built for members of the nearby yacht club.
The audience was also fascinated by the story of the long history of design and construction of a small building for the Amsterdam center of architecture Arcam, also created according to the principles of "system design". In general, the very format of such small exhibition and office pavilions perfectly reflects the mentality of little Holland, which treats such (often temporary) buildings with no less attention than large multifunctional centers. The so-called "beauty committee" of Amsterdam, something like the City Planning Council of Moscow, returned this project to van Zyuk for processing three times. The final version of the pavilion is more reminiscent of a sculpture, a melting house with a sagging roof and a corner cut off like a soft butter, in the place of which a huge opening is arranged. The building stands at the water's edge: from the side of the street, it resembles an airplane body, because these facades are faced with corrugated zinc, and a completely transparent wall faces the water surface, revealing the life of all three floors of the pavilion.
Another equally attractive object was designed by van Zyck for the town of Rosendal as part of a project for the reconstruction of its central retail space. The master plan was carried out by the Dutch office Quadrat, and Rene van Zuuk Architekten created a center of attraction for social activities on the square, designing a very original cafe. Since the square during the renovation turned into a pretty pedestrian zone, the architects decided not to spoil its panorama with a massive pavilion, but to treat the cafe as part of this space. In the Quadrat master plan, this cafe was marked with an oval, but van Zyuk cleverly rethought the shape of the egg, "chopping" it and turning the resulting layers into a cascade of terraces, the lowest of which flows smoothly into the paving of the square.
"System Design" by Rene van Zyuk allows to combine such seemingly incompatible concepts as the most non-standard architectural solutions and ease of production. And the secret of this union is actually simple: each project of this Dutch architect is, first of all, a competent, meaningful concept, a system born from the principles of the building itself and the surrounding context. “The time of simple forms, as well as simple devices, is over,” says van Zyuk. And, most likely, he is right that the search for adequate and inexpensive ways to embody complex forms is not a whim, but the duty of a modern architect. Well, van Zyuk himself copes with this duty perfectly.
