We have just bought bags full of stuff at the weekly market on the Binnenrotte. One side of the market we have just had and are now halfway. Arriving at the new clock building at the end of the market we decide to eat our freshly bought cakes in one of the niches that the interior is rich. I just see the greengrocer in the stall throwing a quick glance at the clock and shouting that it’s time to buy his apples because the market is soon closed. 

The square. What I always had in mind was actually that enormous Binnenrotte, that lacked all sense of human scale. Consisting of a collection of strange objects that coincidentally tried to form a square. And that’s how it feels: an endless and huge square that starts at Station Blaak, but nowhere ends, also visually.

I imagined how beautiful it would be if the chapel becomes a special object in the square that looks a bit akward but also is quite normal, in a way it reminds us to something recognizable. It needs to be a building that means something for the square. And would bring back the human scale to the square.

The building is made out of gray-brown brickwork and forms the visual end or demarcation of the square and marks the transition to the park behind.

Towards the square the chapel communicates in its huge scale (without being rude), and is the building provided with a sign: the clock. Because of this clock the design is based on a Dutch tradition that every important public building has a clock (think for example of the Dam and the Palace). At the same time, the clock is important for the sellers on the market, where being aware of time is very important.

On the park side there is silence, here the building has the scale of a pavilion.

The interior has a beautiful sequence that goes from grand to intimate in scale. It offers both space for the collective and the individual, without being compelling in it. There are numbers of setbacks in the wall to provide room for conversation, but also loneliness and contemplation. The interior also feels as a brick monolite, the raw bricks are glazed in the places where you can sit, to make the building tactile for its visitors.

On the outside, the building is strong and gentile as a figure. Inside the space breathes silence and intimacy.

It is a post-religious space surrounded by the busy market and cafes.