Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Monolab

Profile of Monolab, headquartered in Netherlands. One project submitted by Monolab has been published on Architecture News Plus (ANP).

: Jan Willem van Kuilenburg – © Monolab

Principal

Jan Willem van Kuilenburg

Brief description

Monolab is a Rotterdam-based practice for advanced research and design in urbanism and architecture, founded in 1999. Simplicity (mono) is linked to experiment (lab).

Mission:

Monolab delivers advanced and highly integrated projects through simple and crystal clear concepts with high heartbeats. The projects handle complex issues and are fully integrated in their context and our contemporary culture. In order to design projects that join our speeding culture and to reveal the hidden and lost potentials in urbanism and architecture, Monolab avoids quests for ‘problems-that-have-to-be-solved’ and instead concentrates on chances and prospects through a positive attitude.

Instruments:

As we are living in an era of interlace, our life patterns have become increasingly dynamic. Living, working and leisure are blended more and more. This requires a flexibility from everything and everybody that can be generated and fully powered by density, fusion and parallelism. These are Monolab’s design instruments: Density is bringing together functions in concentrated layouts. Fusion or interlace is the co-operation and / or merging of previously separated functions. Parallelism is the accessibility to several functions at the same moment in the same place.

Commissions:

Monolab deals with large as well as small-scale projects. The office obtains commissions in a wide field: from furniture design to villas, from residential projects to urban schemes, from stations and city centers to distribution hubs.

Staff:

Jan Willem van Kuilenburg is founder and principal architect of Monolab and head of final projects at the Fontys Academy of Architecture and Urbanism in Tilburg. He is a member of the advisory committee architecture, research and design at the Dutch Architecture Fund.

Jan Willem graduated cum laude in 1989 at Delft Technical University, Department of Architecture. He worked as an architect for OMA in Rotterdam: one year leading the design team Euralille and two years leading the design team Congrexpo (Grand Palais) in Rotterdam and Lille. Later he worked at: NS-architects in Utrecht (renamed Holland Railconsult, now StudioSK), KAW-architects in Groningen and the Architect association (renamed AA architecten) in The Hague. Jan Willem taught at Delft Technical University and the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urbanism and currently teaches at the Tilburg Fontys Academy of Architecture and Urbanism and he is regularly lecturing in Holland and abroad.

Published projects

: Body House by Monolab China Town: The site of this private house is part of a residential redevelopment in Katendrecht, a harbor pier south of Hotel New York. Until the 1970’s...