This may look like something you’d find in central Tokyo, but The Villa is a community building which sits at the heart of the Heerlijkheid park in the town of Hoogvliet in the Netherlands. It was designed by Fat and contains a multi-use hall, offices, and a café. It’s design is intended to create a 21st century civic architecture for a suburban new town. It is a decorated shed, using timber rain screen cladding to create an architecture of communication which evokes Hoogvliet’s industrial past, whilst the references to elements of nature in the entrance and in some of the “cut-work” features of the façade, recall the pastoral ideas on which the design of the new town was originally based.
Inside, the shed-like quality of the building is emphasized by the painting pink of the structure. From the inside, views to the park and surrounding landscape are framed by the delicate intricacies of the external envelope.
