‘The Museum as Metabolic Machine’ for the Waalhaven port area in Rotterdam, (2021, Piet-Zwart Institute)
What: Field research, urban planning, architecture, physics, mechanical engineering, AutoCAD, maquette design
Role: Researcher, architect, designer.
An average museum visitor consumes 5.7 kW/h of energy or 2.34 kg of CO2 and 27.3 L of water per visit. These significant ‘invisible’ infrastructure flows are for most of the people hidden. Furthermore, this trend of resource dysconnectivity can also be seen in the academic world where there is only a hand full of researchers who analyzed the in -and output flows of the museum as an entity. Because of this, the question of a museum that is self-sufficient or a closed loop system remains a utopian idea or a far-fetched connection. However, the museum as a hybrid, complex and open-ended machine is not so far removed from reality as we might think. Inspired by the Metabolism architecture movement, anthropologist and art director Clementine Deliss, and the world-famous architect Rem Koolhaas, the connection has been made between the museum as a metabolic body and the museum in the radical context combination with the hyper-modern and technological experience.
The new concept of a metabolic machine as museum critiques the current museum as a grotesque, isolated, resource-sucking building which does not fit the present Waalhaven port site, its context and time. This concept does integrate the different flows of the museum which perfectly align with the economical, industrial and social potential of the Waalhaven area. Through intensive field research, the coherence between the metabolic system as a digesting system and the Waalhaven site and its occupants, as an organ in this system with multiple ‘micro’-metabolisms, results in an architectural structure with 4 connected levels with an open-ended system. The process of the metabolic machine becomes the actual museum itself by showing the thing that has been ‘dirty’ and ‘invisible’ forever and which should be the first thing to design from in the first place, turning the museum inside out. Herein, the machine is dependent on the input of the natural, the material, the people, the companies and the technological, bringing these present isolated and complex structures of Waalhaven and more remote areas together.
Like mentioned before, the whole process of metabolic digesting becomes the essence of the museum, which is the essence of the Waalhaven site too. This results in the architectural structure of 4 connected levels with an open-ended system, which is an exhibition space (level 4, top-left). The input flows of these 4 architectural structures/levels are connected to different micro-metabolism machines in the same system that produce the necessary output for the consecutive levels. The output is energy, water, raw recycled material, space, education, community, art, food, integration, time and activity. With this output, working spaces, studios and collaborative rooms can be used to create a hybrid and open-ended result in which art can be exhibited and experienced through a different creation and curation process.
The first level (most-right) is inspired by the ‘milieustraat’ and is the starting point of the metabolic museum. Here, all the companies and inhabitants can drop off their raw materials. The second level generates usable material or other resources like energy out of this, in a factory manner.
In the third and fourth level, these generated resources are used in working spaces and the open-ended exhibition space.
With the removal of the current visitor ‘clicker’ and the ‘fast visitor flow’, it is even preferable that the visitor stays as long as they want, contribute however possible, play and have a fruitful educational process with the ‘metabolic machine’. This ties back to Deliss who argues that the human being needs to be in an emancipatory and ecological dialogue with the existence of everything that this venue and its collections provide and invoke: a museum without condition to paraphrase Jacques Derrida. Such an open, untethered location with no vantage points, or attempts to direct the mind towards the pens of one experience or another, would be a field, an expanse, an agronomy where every visitor would farm modest meanings from unmastered works, slowly apprehending the metabolics of the museum as a body.
Since the metabolic machine is dependent on the input of the natural, the material, the people, the companies and the technological, one has to bring these present isolated and complex structures of Waalhaven and more remote areas together. Through intensive research of the site as an economical and industrial area, an overview of all the companies + social groups and their field of operation was made in order to look for potential metabolic flows to align with the museum as metabolic machine. With this overview, a collage was made that incorporated every idea in order to create flows of recourses and at the same time bridge the gap between all the companies and the Waalhaven inhabitants/groups. Examples are; letting the race community race on a custom-made museum drifting machine that can generate energy via dynamos, translating B2B (wood) waste flows into heat and energy by a biomass system, turning visitor’s feces into water and energy, etc.
To be even more concrete with these ideas, an elaborate Excel sheet was made that calculated all the ins -and outputs of the different ideas and levels in order to have enough resources at the open-ended exhibition space.
Via this link you can see more about the calculation I made:
