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Architects: LEVS architecten
- Area: 16000 m²
- Year: 2010
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Photographs:Marcel van der Burg
Text description provided by the architects. LEVS architecten, in Amsterdam, has designed two remarkable buildings with 3,500 sqm of shops and 90 apartments. This plan is located where ten years ago a huge fireworks disaster blew away over 425,000 sqm of housing and factories in Enschede, eastern Holland. Since the disaster, the district Roombeek has been spectacularly rebuilt. The new shopping plaza has been erected in the heart of the district in the exact location where the destroyed former Grolsch Beer brewery used to be. The location’s remarkable past was the basis for LEVS’ design for the twelve-story building The Brewmaster and the five-story high The Granary.
Both buildings exhume the atmosphere and history of this extraordinary location. With its characteristic shed roofs, The Brewmaster reminds of the former Grolsch factory. The new construction takes over the landmark function and subtly refers to the vertical lineation of the old factory’s high brewing kettles. The relief effect and color schemes of the large-sized bricks give the building a robust look and are in line with the area’s industrial past. The Granary with its dark red bricks and horizontal frames reminds of the striking industrial buildings of the old textile industry.
With their double high facades, narrow voids and staggering glass walls, the stores in The Brewmaster are eye-catching. Between the two buildings lies one of the major shopping streets making On the Brewery an essential link in the new neighborhood. The combination of shopping and living requires special solutions. The surface level has literally been lifted in both buildings to reach above the shops on the ground floor. A place where residents truly experience their house as a home in the midst of the energy of the shopping streets surrounding them. In 2012 the second phase of the shopping plaza will be delivered and the reconstruction of this district will have been completed.
Text provided by LEVS Architecten
