In 2014, five years after founding his eponymous studio in Amsterdam, Dutch-born architect Anne Holtrop expanded into the Middle East to address the growing demand for meaningful cultural infrastructure in the region.
A competition win for the Milan Expo Bahrain Pavilion brought him to Muharraq, where he set up a workspace in Suq Al Qaysariyyah, a historic pearling-era marketplace he has been instrumental in revitalising. The move allowed Holtrop to combine his experimental approach to materiality with the region’s rich culture, resulting in a series of impactful projects and collaborations.
Holtrop’s philosophy revolves around “material gestures,” emphasising the transformative process of working with materials in their fluid states, such as casting glass, concrete, gypsum and aluminium. “Our material research is based on fundamentally questioning the sourcing and processing of material and how we form it to create our spaces,” he explains. Shelves are lined with blown and cast glass samples, a material prominently featured in his projects, including the Misk Art Institute, currently under construction in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The studio ceilings are six metres high, with two large skylights that work as a sundial “like an oculus in the Pantheon”. “At sunset, the spaces dim beautifully, and the light’s silence replaces the blazing sun’s strength,” Holtrop adds.
The workshop features custom aluminium workbenches and tables designed by the architect, housing prototypes, samples, models, and machinery.
Sand-cast concrete walls, a distinctive construction technique frequently employed in Holtrop’s architectural projects.
Gypsum prototypes cast in a textile formwork developed by Holtrop for Maison Margiela stores.
Custom aluminium workbenches and tables feature throughout the space, designed to hold Holtrop’s ever-growing collection of prototypes, samples, models and machinery, all of which are integral to his hands-on, materials-driven approach. “We connect with all kinds of people from producers to artists to specialist engineers,” he says. “In that shared exchange of knowledge and reflecting on the ongoing experiments we set out in the studio, we find new innovative ways of specifically forming matter in forming architecture.”
This feature originally appeared inside est magazine issue 55: ‘The Faces of Design‘.
Around the table, more classical pieces such as the Eames Moulded Plywood dining chair, are mixed among Holtrop’s custom pieces and prototypes. Above hangs an image of a gypsum wall cast in textile formwork from Holtrop’s Maison Margiela flagship store design in London.
A prototype of the large sand-cast aluminium and structural concrete panels created for Holtrop’s Green Corner Building in Muharraq, Bahrain.
Shelves in Holtrop’s studio lined with hand-blown and cast glass samples, a material treatment that features prominently in much of his work.