Francine Houben Knihy

In this book Francine Houben presents a personal account of her experiences. Text and image convey her original and authentic attitude, views and feelings about architecture. She has made a selection from her many Mecanoo projects for this publication. A home and a canal house. A garden town and a water town. A secondary school, a polytechnic and a university library. The public space of a historic city, a park and a square in a medieval city. A vision of mobility and infrastructure and an ecological new town. A hotel and an underground office. A ruin, a theatre, a decor for an opera, a museum and an exhibition. And finally a chapel in a cemetery. Each of these projects is exemplary of her vision and illustrates the three core elements of how she conceives composition, contrast and complexity.

The quantity of designs and realised projects of the Dutch office Mecanoo architecten is impressive, especially for a 25-year period. The most astonishing aspect however is not only the length of this laundry list of work, but also its diversity; from a Catholic chapel in a cemetery, to a housing neighbourhood on a city's edge, to a city park in a postwar housing area, to a city square in a medieval town centre, to a stage set for an experimental opera, to an army barracks and living quarters, to a dwelling for Francine Houben's own family, to a residential tower with more than fifty different floor plans, to various theatres and the streetscaping of a historical city centre.Rather than imposing a prescribed book assembly, for example, going from small assignments to large works, this method of presenting is a reflection of Mecanoo's design philosophy. In this way, the architecture is expressed as an all-embracing concept that ranges from conditions for a fulfilling daily existence to architectural concepts. The book's composition also sheds light on Mecanoo's meticulous approach to a project assignment. The explanatory project texts support this by illustrating the core of the interpretation of the project's program.