E18 Portrait - Stop demolition and make sense of place

Amersfoort-Otto Scheltus (NL) - Special mention

Stop demolition and make sense of place

Associates: Daan Vulkers (NL), Keimpke Zigterman (NL) – architects
Contributor: Antonio Acocella (IT) – visualiser

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"The title “Stop demolition and make sense of place” forms the core argument of our proposal. In the context of today’s housing crisis, we advocate for the reuse of existing buildings and demonstrate how transformation can enrich the built environment rather than diminish it. The Otto Scheltusflat is a modernist giant: a concrete structure of a scale and materiality that would no longer be built today. Our approach was therefore to retain as much of the existing building as possible—avoiding the waste of embodied carbon already invested, while preserving the architectural language and identity of the structure."