Anne Holtrop: On the cusp of the possible

Central Image: Hans Holtrop | ideantity.ae

Anne Holtrop is a Dutch designer and architect born in 1977. From an early age, he wants to be an artist but decides to study architecture. He then apprentices under the artist Krijn de Koning for about five years and in 2009 he opens his own architectural studio based in Amsterdam, Netherlands and in Muharraq, Bahrain since a large part of the studio’s operations takes place there. In 2015, the Fort Vechten museum in the Netherlands and the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain are completed, two important milestones for the studio. Since January 2019 he has been teaching at the ETH Zurich university and materiality is his main interest both on the academic and the design practice level.

Fort Vechten Museum | urbannext.net

Fort Vechten Museum | commons.wikimedia.org

From the Maison Margiela store in London to the Green Corner Building cultural centre in Muharraq, the materiality of Holtrop’s work is provocatively evident and denotative. It freely brings to mind natural, primitive forms that overwhelm the space and senses. Irregularity, the seemingly raw element and lenient geometries are characteristics of the spaces and objects he creates. He doesn’t construct total environments like caves or highlands, he rather distorts the distinct elements that he uses to their decorative principles, using a quite lucid architectural and design syntax. He states that he likes the organic and unplanned and that systematic, functional and technical prerequisites aren’t neglected but he strives for restrictions beyond the ones set by the principles of design only.

Maison Margiela | archello.com

Maison Margiela | somewhere-magazine.com

Just as in the previous hierarchy and having a similar goal with many other -European mostly- designers of his generation, he strives to advance beyond the postmodern tradition of making multiple and sometimes rampant historical references, creating a work that -in theory- makes no references, instigating his design process with objects and designs encountered outside of architecture. He states that on many occasions he will start a design from an inkblot or found forms that he came across somewhere, overcoming or evading the obstacles of the white paper and of pursuits followed by previous generations like those of history, continuity, tradition, typology and others. He calls that “possible architecture”, meaning the unrestricted creation of space and forms, which echoes in my ears as a somewhat simplified version of alles ist Architektur and its respective manifesto by the idiosyncratic Hans Hollein. 

35 Green Corner Building | archdaily.com

“Possible architecture” along with “material gesture” are two terms coined by him that he insists on using in his interviews to describe and communicate his work. The latter is explained rather cryptically by him as the unique gestures dictated by a particular material. He goes on to say that this process of engaging with the material produces architecture that is not referential or representational, neither is it an abstraction, it simply attempts to exist as its own physical reality. While the final outcome of juxtaposing scales, alternating between the upsized and the downsized, seems, together with the rest of Anne Holtrop studio’s choices, to yield fascinating aesthetic results, stimulating our skin’s eye with their blatantly tangible qualities, at the same time it encourages us to have doubts about their urban status on one hand and on the other about the constant stating of their sensuous identity as objects of touch, irregularity, coarseness and decoration. It’s obvious that he is part of a Central-European tradition that has secured a basic execution level and is now on the search for additional design virtues. If the ones brought to the forefront by Holtrop are the appropriate ones, it remains to be proved.