Espressobar

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

Project details

• Project Name: Espressobar 'de Espressofabriek'
• Client: Rick W. Woertman
• Project Type: Architectural design
• Principal Designer/s: Ramin Visch
• Design Team: Ramin Visch, Tobias Cassel, Femke Poppinga
• Contractor/s: Dhr. M. Kallebach
• Date of commencement of project: May 2005
• Date of completion of project: Sept 2006
• Location of site: Amsterdam
• Site Area: 58 m2
• Built-up Area: 75 m2
• Cost of Construction/Execution: 60,000 euro

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

Interior architect Ramin Visch is a familiar figure at the Westergasfabriek, the former gasworks complex in Amsterdam. He designed the first interior for Het Ketelhuis, a cinema on the site, and this summer he is to undertake its refurbishment. The cinema's proprietor, Rick Woertman, called on Visch for his new espresso bar as well. The designer left the original architecture of the monumental Westelijk Meterhuis (Western Metering Building) intact and inserted a detached sculptural box which embraces all the specified functions.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

In the field of interior architecture, we can broadly speaking distinguish two types of designer. One kind concentrates on seduction, on creating a theatrical decor and evoking a specific atmosphere. No means are eschewed to achieve this. The other type creates an interior that is difficult to recognize as such, for the design places itself at the service of the architectonic space and endeavours to enhance its quality and the experience it offers to the greatest possible degree. Ramin Visch, who trained at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, takes a position midway between these two outlooks. He is a designer with a strongly architectural orientation, who would never descend to mere stylistic devices intended to seduce and overwhelm the visitor. Instead he focuses his attention on preserving and respecting the existing architectural quality.

Visch has been occupied with two commissions on the transformed gasworks site in Amsterdam West. Each assignment concerns the conversion of a nineteenth-century industrial building to house a new function: a cinema in the case of the former boiler house (Het Ketelhuis) and an espresso bar in that of the metering building (Westelijke Meterhuis). Both buildings are listed for preservation. The espresso bar, called the Espressofabriek ("Espresso Factory") is now ready.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

The two conversions show the same approach. A new volume, which encloses all the main functions, is inserted into the existing space as a kind of sculptural box. The box is explicitly separated from the existing architectural fabric and differs distinctly from it in the architectural means employed. The authentic industrial architecture and its typical structural features remain entirely intact and one hundred percent visible.

In each case, a demanding programme of functions has been packed into the new volume. The Espressofabriek, for instance, has a floor area of only 52 square metres. The box encloses toilets, a bar, storage space and a staircase to the roof. The roof itself is occupied by chairs and tables. The relatively large height of the Meterhuis roof made it possible to create a second storey beneath it.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

Visch has placed the new box lengthways the building. There is storage space behind the bar and the entrance to the toilets is located at one end. Next to the building entrance, a staircase rises to the seating area above. Tables and chairs are grouped along the length of the space as well as above the bar. The materials of the box, with its surfaces treated with blackboard paint and a refreshment bar in stainless steel, contrast with those of the original architecture. Old and new refuse to intermingle anywhere. Should the building ever be assigned a different function, the box could be extracted again without mayhem.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

The Ketelhuis Cinema, where three film auditoria are being fused into an almost space-filling interior volume, and the Espressofabriek, both stand out for the broad, powerful gesture of the design. The inserted objects occupy the space like autonomous sculptures, complete with dents and bumps. The intervention is clear: nowhere is the visitor seduced by stylistic devices, neither by a designer in pursuit of effect nor in the use. Whatever the user does with the interior, the concept holds out.

Photograph by Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect.

Credits

• Text: de Architect / Liesbeth Melis
• Photographs: Jeroen Musch, Courtesy of the Architect