An oversized bookcase

An archive is like a treasure trove. Or a time machine. Or both. That’s why, for the city of Delft in the Netherlands, the city archive is an especially important building, because it is where the city’s history is preserved and available to the public. The task of the architectural firms Office Winhov, in Amsterdam, and Gottlieb Pauladen Architects, in Copenhagen, was therefore to develop a new archive building in the middle of a park, creating visual links to the historic city centre.
 
The result is a timeless, rugged cube with a brick façade and the highly efficient organisation of internal space. On the ground floor, there are offices, workshops and public reading rooms with unobstructed views of the outside; the floors above have closed façades and house the archive depositories.

The relief work on the façade links the building with the distinctive tradition of brick buildings in Delft. The white concrete base is a clear reference to other public buildings in the city’s historic centre, and the classic arrangement highlights the cultural and public importance of the archive building. The abstract brickwork is intended to be both reminiscent of bookshelves and evoke associations with the work of Jan Schoonhoven, one of Delft’s most important artists. 
 
The facing bricks were laid in a regular pattern with variable recesses. The result is an external brick design that references the high level of detail within the archives. The public building, which is important to Delft, is open to the public for research and work in the reading rooms, and makes a significant contribution to collective work on historical records, above and beyond temporal and historical boundaries. A worthy winner in the ‘Working together’ category.