Wansleben-Architekten, Köln
The naval barracks of the Dutch national police, the Koninklijke Marechaussee (KMar) situated in the centre of Amsterdam directly on the North Sea canal, was designed by the Cologne architects Wansleben with an external façade of ostensible simplicity while embodying the resistant character of the building.
One of the features is that the dark surface of the structure resembles a woven mat. Hering used triangular fillets as profiled shuttering and was thus able to cause the grain to protrude evenly from the surface after surface treatment, washing in this case, thus providing the desired structure.
Another special feature was the result of the wish to give the front of the façade elements a colour contrasting with the window embrasures. To make the precast concrete units for this purpose, Hering used dark grain but no pigments to intensify the colour. On washing of the front, the grain and thus a dark surface were exposed. The smooth surfaces of the window embrasure retained the light colour of the cement paste. Moreover, the labrador used as granular material glistens in sunshine, thus providing the surface with an additional effect.
The external and internal shuttering façade elements were made individually. This method of production required great care during manufacture with tolerances of +/- 5 mm to permit the 16 window openings per panel to be mounted such later on that they fitted precisely.
