Excellence Through Passion
Authorized Maserati dealer, Louwman Exclusive Cars, Netherlands.
Whether you are an existing Maserati owner or visiting the dealership for the first time, this Maserati showroom provides a welcoming environment for you to view the latest offerings from the Trident marque.
'Sixty seconds of architecture'
Along the A2 highway from Amsterdam to Maastricht, the Acoustic Barrier and the Cockpit have been designed from the perspective of a flow of cars passing by with the speed of 120 km/h. The dominant design principle in this building is the use of long continuous lines forming smoothly stretched shells on both sides of the barrier. The long elastic lines along the length of the barrier have no explicit beginning or end and make up a 1.5 km long stretched slender body. This streamlining is used for cars, boats and planes to diminish drag. In the section the shapes change from angular to smoothly curved, from convex to concave curves. In the car industry you can find similar folding lines which run for some length and then stop again, creating a play of variable lights and colours. The A2 Highway front is built up with a triangulated system of 300 one-off glass elements, the other front side is clad with an aluminium cladding.
'Design formula'
The length of the Acoustic Barrier is stretched 10 times its height in the longitudinal direction. The barrier widens to a maximum width of 30m and a maximum height of 20m to inhabit the Cockpit, a showroom/workshop for luxury cars like:
■ Maserati
■ Lexus
■ Bentley
■ Rolls-Royce
■ Lamborghini
Internally the floors of the showroom form a closed circuit loop following the NURBS curves of the glass facade. The loop connects the 4 levels, each for one brand. This enables the visitor to make an architectural tour and experience the entire building. Thanks to the natural lighting produced by the continuity of the glass facade into the glass roof, and thanks to the proximity of the volume to the highway, the cars will be effcetivily visible from the A2 highway. The automotive styling generates an architecture which no longer is based on the aesthtics of repetition. All building components are tailor made one-offs, each element has an unique shape and an unique dimension.
'One building one detail'
The whole Acoustic Barrier basically is described in one single parametric detail, informed by the 3d model. A second parametric detail describes the values of the steel construction and the glass elements of the A2 facade of the Cockpit. Both details refer to a common reference curve. Cockpit and Acoustic Barrier are produced according to a strictly controlled file to factory process. Without any detours or intermediate steps ONL has written effective scripts running on the point cloud of reference points which is extracted from the 3d surface model. As a byproduct the scripts produce the 3d visualization of all constituting elements. The essential performance of the scripts is that it produces all relevant data neatly administrated in a table for the CNC production machines. The cutting, welding en drilling machines read the data from the table and produce all discrete parts without the interference of human labor. All parts are given a number and are quickly bolted together, first in the factory as a test model and full-size mock-up, later on the building site. This process of mass customization of the building enables a completely new vision on architectural expression. Architecture and construction are in this way fully connected, both in the design process and in the production process, and as a visual endresult. Architecture and construction have become one.
Project type: Exclusive car showroom
Floor surface area: 6.400 m2
Cost: EUR 5.500.000
Construction start: 2003
Completion: September 2005
Lead designer: Kas Oosterhuis
Project architect: Sander Boer
Design team: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd, Cas Aalbers, Sander Boer, Tom Hals, Ines Moreira, Dimitar Karanikolov, Vladin Petrov, Tom Smith, Richard Lewis, Gijs Joosen, Andrei Badescu, Maciek Swiatkowsky