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The project aims to disintegrate the walls of the museum, proposes an alternative architecture, and tries to think of a museum that collects and interprets social and cultural production.

 

The location for the project: Waalhaven is an industrial area with users from multiple backgrounds. It is mostly constituted of warehouses, car repair shops, wholesale factories, and harbor companies. The users of the area are present there for mostly working purposes, and even though there are some communities like the carwash community and the fisherman community, people don't seem to spend time there, or even own the space. Throughout the interviews with the users of the space, it became clear that a museum is not something Waalhaven wants. Having just another museum on Waalhaven would be nothing but another top-down approach to gentrification. Gentrification is a rather misapplied concept; when the already existing communities are left out for the more profitable users, this becomes discrimination; but gentrification can also happen with the involvement of those communities. Whereas, instead of proposing another museum that excludes the already existing communities of space, the "Dismantling The Museum Wall" focuses on creating an architecture that gives them a space full of possibilities, with multiple purposes, multiple use cases around social and cultural activities while involving the communities and making them feel they belong.

 

The modular wall constituted by 4mx4m right-angled triangles of 12 situated on rails, situated on the parking lot can be organized to respond to different kinds of uses. There are several locks on the rails, given as pre-decided positionings, nevertheless, those positioning can be alternated. In the fully open position, it is a 25 m long wall; it can also be organized as a zig-zag wall to have convex and concave spaces which can hold different types of exhibitions. When the middle section is flat and the sides are closed, the wall becomes a concert or theater stage or an open-air cinema. When the zig-zag form is bent in a circular form, it becomes a space for festivals, bazaars, or fairs, which gives an opportunity for the users of the space for socializing. The corners can be 90 degrees and the space becomes an enclosed structure. The wall gives opportunities for playing with the perception of the interior and exterior and invites the passing people, as well as the visitors. 

 

For the 1/1 production, a 7x7 metal profile as the frame and honeycomb material on both sides - for lightness, semi-transparency, semi-transmissivity, and strength purposes is proposed. The whole structure is designed to be moving on the rails with locks on certain positions and will be controlled by motorized castor wheels.

 

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