Ellen von Loon Interview: Contaminating Architecture

Meet architect Ellen van Loon, the Dutch ‘design duchess’ of the world-renowned Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), who here talks about the ideas and “architectural contamination” that went into creating the new multifunctional BLOX building in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark: “I think it was the right task for us, this site, because nobody really knew what to do with it… and it had to do with re-inventing mixed-use, reinventing DAC and re-inventing this area of Copenhagen.”
“You can’t just go through the building, the building is made in such a way that you do have to interact with it.” Van Loon was interested in mixing the various functions of BLOX - which contains DAC (Danish Architecture Center), exhibition spaces, offices and co-working spaces, a café, a bookstore, a fitness centre, a restaurant, twenty-two apartments and an underground public car park - meaning that the users in the building can use each other’s space. She hopes that the building will attract a lot of people, and that the various users and residents, as well as visitors, will interact: “The dream was a mixing chamber to the max.”
The building is an architectural statement, placed in a historic part of Copenhagen with small, old houses and the waterfront to keep in mind. The main purpose, however, was to create “a good space where you can explain architecture to the visitors of this building.” In connection to DAC, they wanted to “embed them in their own field of study” by placing them in the centre of the building, which meant that they would “contaminate all the other functions.” Moreover, the scale of the pixelated building presents an opportunity to show architecture in a much larger scale as well as connecting other art forms to the museum, thus making it a venue devoted to not only architecture but also design and urban culture.
Ellen van Loon (b. 1963) is a Dutch architect and partner at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. Based in Rotterdam, van Loon joined OMA in 1998, and alongside eight partners including Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten, Chris van Duijn, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and Jason Long, she has led several award-winning building projects around the world. Some of the most significant contributions include New Court, Rothschild Bank Headquarters in London, the G-Star Headquarters in Amsterdam, Maggie’s Centre in Glasgow, De Rotterdam in Rotterdam, Casa da Musica in Porto, and BLOX in Copenhagen, which is fronted by herself and Rem Koolhaas. Van Loon is the recipient of awards such as the 2007 RIBA Award and the European Union Mies van der Rohe award (2005).
Ellen van Loon was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at BLOX in Copenhagen, Denmark in January 2018. For more about BLOX see: www.blox.dk/english
Camera: Klaus Elmer
Edited by: Klaus Elmer
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2018
Supported by Dreyers Fond
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[@stinar]

Studying architecture in Copenhagen, I find this building beautiful in itself, but a disgrace for the city. You can't just put boxes that fits in your hands and scale it up 200x.

[@dauwesw8228]

Ellen says it in the video: surrounded by small buildings, you dont want to create a massive building by fitting a wide program into complex shapes. Also simple cubic shapes fit well with the quay landscape. You can call it a disgrace to the city or architecture itself, just remember youre no authority on either of those. People have their own taste (personally i also think the building wouldve been more persuasive in a more modern context like Rotterdam).

[@doktergroen]

@@dauwesw8228 Stian never claimed to be an authority.

[@jorgeburgos8169]

With superficial explanations like these, architects could really justify any massing or architectural gesture. Why not drop a banana over the site? The diagram showed a banana. Why can't some architects just be honest and tell the public that their work is as circumstantial as their last thought. Fuck the context, here is my ego...deal with it. Today, the field projects mendacity as virtue and treat our cities like a joke.

[@Miklus023]

They cut off the water line so you can't even take a walk along the harbor, that is the single biggest crime. My only comfort is that it is going bankrupt. It needed 91MDKK to stay afloat in 2019.

[@galas062]

a mall....LA

[@sepehrsasani3130]

so obscure kinda speaking.

[@doktergroen]

What a monstrosity. The bamboo floors seem to be the only sustainable feature. Dreadful.

[@g.j.koster1986]

It's horrific. She is a disgraceful architect.