Architecture School to Exhibit Innovative Dutch Project

The Yale School of Architecture will host an exhibition titled “Big Soft Orange” in its Main Gallery on the second floor of the Art and Architecture Building, 180 York St., from Nov. 5-20. The show will feature a contemporary Dutch architecture and urban planning project to be built near Utrecht. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. The exhibition is free and the public is welcome.

The project, called the Leidsche Rijn Masterplan, is scheduled to be built by the year 2015. It is an adaptive reuse and expansion of an existing corporate town involving an unusual partnership between Holland’s private and public sectors.

Contemporary Dutch architecture is a major influence on avant garde thinkers and designers around the world, according to Dean Sakimoto, who runs the Architecture School’s gallery. This show is curated by Michael Speaks, who teaches at Columbia University School of Architecture and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIARC). Speaks will lead a panel discussion of the project with representatives from the participating architectural firms at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 in Hastings Lecture Hall on the lower level of the Art and Architecture Building. A reception will follow.

Four young Dutch architecture/planning offices, MAX.1, NL Architects, Crimson, and One Architecture participated in the master plan. The exhibition centers around an 18-by-15-foot scale model of the project, involving 30,000 houses, 26 bridges traversing small canals, and an orange tennis ball motif. The heat transfer station, designed by Crimson, incorporates playful elements such as mountain climbing pegs, a basketball window and a series of buried automobile reflectors.

This exhibit coincides with the School of Architecture’s Open House. for prospective students.