Forthcoming: in conversation with Henk Döll

20 July, 2007 in Architecture, Comics, Connections, Interviews, Joost Swarte, Travel

Further to the other recent announcements about forthcoming interviews, I’m very pleased to confirm that while in the Netherlands and in addition to meeting the cartoonist and illustrator Joost Swarte, I will be meeting the architect Henk Döll. Döll was the project architect at Mecanoo Architecten who worked with Swarte to build the Haarlem Toneelschuur. Döll now has his own practice in Rotterdam, who provide this useful biography.

Henk Döll (born 1956) graduated in 1984 from the Department of Architecture at the Technical University of Delft. As a result of winning and realising the ‘Kruisplein’ housing competition in Rotterdam (1980-1985), he was already working during his studies as an independent architect in the firm of Döll-Houben-Steenhuis. In 1983 this cooperative firm was changed into the Delft-based office of Mecanoo, in which he was partner until mid-2003. Within Mecanoo Henk Döll was responsible as leading architect for more than 120 projects and was also closely involved in many of the office’s other works. A large number of his projects, such as the Park Haagseweg residential area in Amsterdam, the Almelo Public Library, the multi-functional Rochussenstraat building in Rotterdam, and the Toneelschuur in Haarlem, are key projects in the history of Dutch architecture.

At Mecanoo he received various prizes and distinctions, such as the Rotterdam-Maaskant Prize for Young Architects in 1987, “for his innovative contribution to housing architecture”. His work has been shown at numerous exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad and is often published in Dutch and international magazines and books.

Henk Döll regularly gives guest lectures and presentations and he teaches at various architectural schools, both at home and abroad. His appointments have included a guest professorship at the Institüt für Städtebau, Raumplanung und Raumordnung of the Technische Universität Wien (1995) and the Eliel Saarinen chair at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of Michigan (2000/2001). He has served on numerous competition juries and is currently a board member of the Genootschap Architectura et Amicitia and of the Atelier HSL Foundation.

Is a comic artist and illustrator without any formal architectural training necessarily a better or equally capable designer of buildings than a professional architect? By meeting both Joost Swarte (the comic artist) and Henk Döll (his partner in the Toneelschuur project), I look forward to finding out two very valuable opinions.