BUILING, UNBUILDING,REBUILDING

Location : HNI, Rotterdam

Client : Air, Rotterdam Architecture Month 2022

Status : Exhibition, research

Photograph : Studio ACTE, Stijn Bollaert

Design& Built : Studio ACTE

In 2021, Studio ACTE designed a temporary and dismountable sleeping cabin in Rotterdam. The Circular Pavilion was self-build, from a broad palette of materials harvested from local, urban ‘mines’. In 2022, the pavilion was deconstructed and transported in Brabant to be rebuilt as a plant nursery. The Green House reuses the unbuilt material, evolving techniques and showcasing new assemblies of reuse. 

These two projects are the first in a series of prototypes, providing a 1:1 catalogue of details of reuse, a handbook of ways to learn and combine old material. Through workshops, 1:1 experiments and collective building methods, they propose a unique architectural process suggesting a new way of building. To answer the ecological emergency, the status of matter must be re-understood as the seed of our resilience and the craft of reuse could invent a new aesthetic for the city.