📙Special Issue
Huig #12
Hergebruik
By:
✍️J. Duursma, C. van Langen, A. Milward, & J. Visschers
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On:
🕓2011, February 4
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In:
🏢Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design
Huig (named after Dutch architect H. A. Maaskant) is an architectural periodical published annually by the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design (RAvB). This twelfth (special) issue addresses the current topic of vacancy in architecture and urban planning in the city of Rotterdam, Netherlands. The layout design envelops the reader in the magazine and makes the reading experience similar to traversing a vacant city. Various design elements are used to this end. For example, the inside of the protective dust jacket is a cartographic map of the contents of the entire issue, and serves as an overview of its contents and pages. Additionally, zoom-ins and zoom-outs are used to frame the pages that follow like a canvas, with some containing section overviews, others containing articles, interviews, and there is also a photographic essay running throughout the entire volume. While the front cover is glossy to illustrate the new – or the new-build – each section is in fact thematic and successively addresses one stage of the lifecycle of the architectural building (i.e., new-build, decay, vacancy, reuse, and demolition). Design elements differ in each thematic section to illustrate these successive phases. The editorial and photographic content are all aligned with this theme. Notably, the demolition phase is intentionally left out so as to make a statement and suggest the discourse move towards adaptive reuse instead. That is, a move towards reusing sites or buildings for purposes other than for which they were originally built or designed (e.g., repurposing vacant office buildings for social housing).
