Perot Pouliise and Jan-Willem Bayense, partners de Architecten CIE
- Brick and clinker facades are in your Dutch and Russian projects. Do you use this material differently in Moscow than in the Netherlands, or is the construction site less important than other circumstances?
Feather Poulise:
- We use it more or less the same - simply because the technique of laying bricks on the facade does not differ much, but still every time it is special, depending on the context, on where the building is oriented, how the buildings surrounding it look like. That is, there is a difference.
Jan-Willem Bayens:
- Also for our Moscow project Vander Park, we used a much longer brick than we would have in the Netherlands: longer and larger.
-
Image 
zooming 1/4 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 2/4 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 3/4 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 4/4 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
- Do you agree that clinker is an “urban” material that can be used to create high-quality urban fabric in new development areas, in former industrial zones, and so on - compared to rural areas?
Feather Poulise:
- Yes, we completely agree. If you look at Amsterdam, the city where our office is located, it is famous for its houses on the canals, which are built of bricks, and these houses are very beautiful, although they are already hundreds of years old. And in this sense, I think now brick is much more urban material than rural.
Jan-Willem Bayens:
- You also need to keep in mind the distance from which you see the building. Here we are standing four meters from a brick wall and can make out all the different bricks and details. Outside the city, you may be driving by at a speed of 80 km / h, and all the facades are just a flat surface.
-
Image 
zooming 1/5 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 2/5 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 3/5 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 4/5 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 5/5 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
Image 
zooming 1/3 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 2/3 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
-
zooming 3/3 Vander Park residential complex in Moscow Photo © Daniil Annenkov. Provided by Hagemeister
- Your Vander Park project is a large facility near the borders of Moscow, in a very difficult environment. How did clinker come in handy in these circumstances?
Feather Poulise:
- Yes, the material of this residential complex is brick, but before I say anything about it, I must emphasize that the project was very special due to the high density and because to accommodate the program we had to divide the entire volume of apartments into different towers, that is, we have created a kind of city in miniature. This is a series of tall elements that are quite similar to each other, since the tower is a very simple typology, where you “extrude” one floor from bottom to top to the very roof.
The challenge for us was the need to create a community in the complex where residents could identify with the parts of Vander Park where they live. That is, on the one hand, brick was used as an environmentally friendly material in comparison with all panel houses around, and on the other hand, we used bricks of different colors, which gave each of our towers individuality. There are only three types of bricks, three colors, but, nevertheless, all nine towers, thanks to the shift in their volumes and different materials, each got their own image and character.
- Clinker, brick is a very old material, but it is still in great demand: why is it so useful for modern architects?
Jan-Willem Bayens:
- In Holland, it is the most sustainable material, because it alone ages well in our very humid, windy climate - and contractors know how to use it efficiently, so it is also affordable. And in Russia he has this long-standing quality of "stability", which is already hundreds of years old - and which works everywhere.
Tako Postma, partner INBO architecten
- How can clinker be useful in creating a human-centered urban space for new large development areas such as Zuidas in Amsterdam?
- We always try to create buildings that are more humane, more co-scale, and people perceive the size of a brick well, they can always tell from it how big a building is. In Zuidas, we were ordered new apartment buildings, which were supposed to appear between the office buildings, since Zuidas was founded as a business district, and then the municipality decided to make a mixed development zone there. That is, we had to transform this territory from a business district into a very pleasant, lively multifunctional area. To show that these new buildings are different from the rest, we decided to use bricks. People immediately recognize these buildings as residential projects, so they can see - from this material - that the area is changing. And we did this with clinker.
- Dutch cities have an incredibly rich and long history of brick architecture. How do you feel about her? Are you enriching this tradition, or rather looking for new, modern uses for bricks and clinker?
“In history, bricks were used as a building material, but now they are used for cladding, therefore, as such, our work is very different from tradition. But we try to keep in touch with her, understanding how the brick was used, how it looked, how you can make new masonry so that it is connected with tradition, but also remains something special, something modern. I would say our position is in the middle.
- Inbo's projects are very contextual: how does clinker help you achieve this?
“As I said, in clinker projects, we always try to keep in touch with the context. And we believe that we design for an urban space, we never build just one building, but try to add something to the urban environment with it. And clinker helps connect the new building with the environment - the way we use this material is one of the ways to achieve this goal.
- You sometimes use clinker as part of a diverse palette of materials, like in the Intermezzo residential tower. What is your guideline when choosing material combinations and clinker gradings?
- This is a very difficult question, because, of course, architecture is primarily concerned with light and spatial composition, and when you work, you always choose very specific materials for a very specific project. But, for example, in the case of Intermezzo, we were building a building in a diverse environment, with many colors and differences, and we decided that we would like to add a light building there. And a light building in the Netherlands is always a big challenge, because the climate is very harsh, so it will immediately get dirty or even green. Therefore, we used a very hard clinker from one of the Hagemeister light grades. But we also wanted the building to be the same color, but there were still differences between floors, top and bottom. Therefore, we decided to use natural stone on the lower levels, where the apartments are of a different size than the rest of the house. And we found a stone called "white gold", it is almost the same color as clinker, so we were able to make facing of different sizes and textures in different parts of the facade, but of the same color, so that the building turned out to be iconic and effective. When the sun goes down, we really see how the "gold" on the façade glitters slightly. This is a very successful way to combine these two materials.
