One for the road; a movable gallery created with great economy and ingenuity out of a common industrial product: technology transfer at its simplest and most effective - Design Review - Critical Essay

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002 by Michelle Rea

A competition organized by the BNA (Royal Dutch Institute of Architects) called for a cheap, temporary, movable pavilion. Light Building won second prize and the BNA set about finding a client for the idea. Parade, a summer travelling theatre troupe, backed the proposal as an art gallery that could accompany the players on their wanderings.

The budget was extremely small, so the architects used one of the Netherlands' most common products, the beer crate, as the basic building block. Instead of the usual coloured crates that advertise the brewers' wares, the architects specified white translucent plastic. So strength is obtained from the shape and material of the crates, while light can go through the 300mm thick walls they form.

Crates are bolted together into easily liftable units six long and three high. Units are locked in place with steel rods running up the height of the walls, tensed by screwing bolts onto an angle iron at the top. Anchorage is provided by spikes driven into the ground, and the floor is of wooden boards on sleepers????. The roof is of corrugated steel panels. The whole thing, 15m long, four wide and six high, can be put up and taken down in a day by six people. The cost was about [euro]55 per cubic metre, very cheap by West European standards.

Externally, the grey building seems massive, with doors set to emphasize the thickness of the walls. Inside, the light is calm, soft and suitable for showing paintings, yet it is of course subject to the sky, with radical transformations when clouds cover the sun. With a good sunset, the walls glow with distant fire. This magic follows the acting company on its itinerary but, as the architects point out, if the clients get fed up with the pavilion, its elements can always be reused for carting beer bottles.

Architect

Ateller Kempe Thill

Beer crates

Schoeller Wavin Systems of Hardenberg

Photographs

Bastiaan IngenHousz