Nisa, Lelystad

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When I went back for the first time in many years, the Netherlands Institute for Marine Archeology appeared to be closed on 1 January this same year. This building, like an inverted ship's hull, was opened in 1999 for research on old boats found in the Netherlands during activities such as the IJsselmeer polders. The place is in the middle of the former Zuiderzee. Here, it all started with the draining of the polders.

The 150-meter-long building has been built so that the finds from the sea can be brought in on one side and moved up a little in the process until it is preserved and suitable to be exhibited. Twenty-seven elliptical wooden laminated trusses form the base of this building.

In 1997, I helped KCAP architects with the working drawings of this building. What was particularly notable was an exact alignment of the curvature of the rafters with the different layers of façade cladding in the longitudinal and transverse directions. In my archive, I find complex tables of the exact coordinates of each point along the curvature.

In the drawings, I have been working on a (Swedish rabat) wooden covering in the longitudinal direction in the upper part of the facade and a profiled steel facade along the ground floor. This wooden cover was removed later and replaced by a steel façade panel over the entire façade. The end facades were made with a Butzbach façade system. The east façade, where the crane runs inwards, is completely dismountable if necessary for large parts.