Wiel Arets Architects: Police Station Boxtel

Police Station Boxtel by Wiel Arets Architects Wiel Arets is one of those architects whose works are very diverse and yet of the same kind. His buildings are usually compositions of geometrical shapes, from the rigorous proportions of the Academy of Arts and Architecture in Maastricht, to the free stacking of boxes that make up his 1997 police station in Boxtel, the Netherlands. Born in a Dutch-German border town of Heerlen in 1955, Arets graduated from Eindhoven University in 1983 and established Wiel Arets Architect & Associates in his home town a year later. Today Wiel Arets Architects (WAA) is a globally active architecture and design firm, whose work extends into education and publishing, with studios located in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Comprised of an international team of architects, designers, thinkers and administrators, the firm is currently involved in a large number of projects scattered throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Its architecture and design emerges from research and a balance of hybrid-programming solutions, which adapt to and anticipate future contextual change. Police Station Boxel is one from numerous projects by WAA noatbel for their timelessness. The Boxtel building was commissioned by the Dutch regional police, and its design responds to the commissioner's need to redefine their relationship with the general public through a process of “openness”. This openness is sought at the institutional level, yet it is also to be represented in its new buildings. The Police Station is sculptured, enabling its users to traverse the building through a series of spatial thresholds creating a cinematic oscillation between the garden and the interior. Its form creates an ambiguity in scale, which fluctuates between the industrial scale of its materials and the domestic scale found in the surrounding housing. A raised block creates an entrance void below allowing a momentary glimpse from the road and passing cars. Words: Wiel Arets Architects, Thisispaper Photography: Courtesy of Wiel Arets Architects