Ceramic House
Facade of Ceramic House All Photos by Studio RAP / Riccardo De Vecchi
Studio RAP is an architectural design company that brings computational design innovation to clients. That means parametric design and bespoke 3d printing, very experimental it’s part architecture, product design, fashion even.
Along with co-architects Gietermans & Van Dijk they have created in 2022 Ceramic House, a reimagined facade of a 19th Century dutch brick house. Studio Rap here have taken this dutch universal design palette and twisted it in a way both matching and at the same time almost unrecogniseable. They have taken the brick and ceramic materials and given them the appearance of a living fabric.
Technically although it looks like a brick facade gone crazy its ceramic brick tiles mounted on stainless steel cassettes on steel substructure. A rainscreen facade instead of a solid one, with the steel cassettes acting as a visual mortar.
The game played here is lovely, the tension between the existing architectural expression and a new one expressing itself is delicious.
Ceramic House is on the street P.C. Hoofstraat, itself a 19th C bourgoisie re-interpretation of the dutch canal house street. It’s also nice to see it here on the same street where MVRDV ’s Glass Brick Facade with the material of glass bricks is an earlier example trying to do the same thing. Thus a high end extremely experimental design conversation has appeared in an otherwise fairly non-descript street.
Experimental high fashion in design is lurking here playing a game with itself accepting as few constraints from the existing city fabric and totally breaking a few others.
⚲ location: 52°21’39.1”N 4°52’57.4”E
Some concept sketches below of the 3d printed facades.
