Amsterdam, March 2023: Circular Tolerance

Circular Tolerance — Circular construction with upcycled elements for Podium Haarlemmermeer

The 8-days workshop from 18-26 March 2023 in Amsterdam looked at availability-based design and construction. Forty students from the five partner schools studied methods of how to develop design projects based on reclaimed materials. The students developed four proposals for interventions on a site in Haarlemmermeer on the basis of a given set of reclaimed building components.

PART 1: modelmaking, prototyping and upcycle building elements Saturday 18 - Tuesday 21

In the first part, each team worked with one of the harvested materials/building elements so they would become ambassadors for / experts in each material. In the first two days, we made mock-ups (1:10) and prototypes. We tried to add and create value to the elements by designing different application possibilities. One or two times a day, we organized crits to present, reflect and discuss. On Monday (the third day), we visited the projected site for the rebuild project, a self-defined space to contribute to the environment and showcase the chosen builder components. During the trip, we exercised ‘reading the landscape’, looking for local values that resonate with the possibilities of the imagined repurposed solutions. At the end of the fourth day, we decided which combination of building elements we would use for the final construction and how these elements could fit together.

PART 2: joining the upcycled building elements Wednesday 22 – Saturday 25

During the second part of the workshop, we tried to make a collective construction of all the upcycled building elements. We made all parts and joints of the constructions in scale 1:10 and 1:1 and assembled them as an exhibition in the makerspace for a discussion with representatives from the site and the Podium voor Architectuur Haarlemmermeer en Schiphol.

Thanks to Paul Bos (Boer Bos) for having us on his extraordinary site, Yvonne Lub and Floor Nijdeken from the Podium voor Architectuur Haarlemmermeer en Schiphol for their input and feedback, the Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam, the makerspace (Martijn Troost, Bo Jansen, Peter Schuitemaker) for hosting us, as well as Emmalot Morel (AvB) for the organization.