Neutelings Riedijk Architects, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (2006)
“[…] Inside the building that tranquillity gives way to a comic-book version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, with strict divisions between various worlds. Visitors enter via an internal bridge that crosses over an underground atrium. From here, a vast hall conceived on the scale of a piazza leads to a cafeteria overlooking the calm surface of a reflecting pool. On one side of the hall looms the ziggurat form of the museum; on the other, a wall of glass-enclosed offices. Here the spectral glow of the interior of the cast-glass skin evokes the stained-glass windows of a medieval cathedral.
“It’s a stunning space whose power lies in the contrast between the various architectural experiences within. Clad in cold gray slate, for instance, the underground atrium is a striking counterpoint to the heavenly glass walls above. Mr. Neutelings and Mr. Riedijk call the atrium their ‘inferno.’ It also evokes a tomb: big, square openings are cut through the atrium’s walls, revealing a series of corridors painted a hellish red. The archives are tucked behind these corridors, where researchers and scholars, you suppose, toil away with the concentration of monks. […]” –Nicolai Ouroussoff, The New York Times, May 26, 2007
The building, pictured above, was completed by Neutelings Riedijk Architects in 2006.
Contributed by Darren Fishell (Bowdoin ’09)
Sighting Citation:
“Neutelings Riedijk Architects, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (2006).” Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Elizabeth Coggeshall and Arielle Saiber, eds. May 26, 2007. https://www.dantetoday.org/sightings/the-netherlands-institute-for-sound-and-vision/.Related Sighting
Olafur Eliasson, “Your Rainbow Panorama,” ARoS Museum (2011)