café, having come straight from a seven-hour
meeting in The Hague about the Dutch parliament
renovation that she is working on there. Anyone
else would probably be nursing a throbbing headache at
this point, but van Loon seems completely unafected,
full of energy and happily reminisces about her
university days.
‘My initial drive is the conceptual take on a project,’
she explains. ‘I was always in the model shop of the
university, trying to ind new shapes, new ways of
organising buildings. I remember a moment in my
studies when Rem gave a lecture about the library in
Paris [Très Grande Bibliothèque, OMA’s competition
entry for a new national library] and I was totally
labbergasted. I remember thinking this was the irst
architect I’d met that could really think conceptually.’
Van Loon graduated in the early 1990s and, seeking
international experience, as well as the chance to cut
her teeth on larger-scale public buildings (designing
single family houses was never going to be enough),
she went to Berlin. With the Wall having just come
down, this was an exciting time for the German capital,
full of positivity and architectural promise. ‘I was
planning to stay for one year but I stayed ive,’ she
recalls. She was soon given more responsibility on
biger projects, which is exactly what she wanted –
working, among other things, on Foster + Partners’
iconic Reichstag building.
When van Loon returned to the Netherlands in
1998, she was ofered a job at OMA and it seemed a
perfect match in many ways. ‘In terms of working
conceptually, OMA was the right place to be. But I was
also happy that, by now, I had a bit of experience in
practice. This was a moment when OMA was gaining
a lot of momentum; we got many commissions fornew projects and international work. It was the
perfect moment to start.’
The architect was a young mother at the time, but
working with Koolhaas was enticing and the studio
had an ‘exciting’ project for her, the headquarters of
Universal Studios in Los Angeles. ‘I was a bit hesitant,
as I was going to an oice that is 24/7 and the light
is always on, and I thought, “How on earth am I
going to manage that with a private life and a baby?”’
she remembers.
It didn’t stop her. In fact, it seems not many things
do. By all accounts, van Loon is not a quitter. She
describes her breakthrough moment, the commission
for the Casa da Música in Porto, as a ‘crazy concept’.
It was completed to wide acclaim in 2005 and remains
one of OMA’s most recognisable works. She is currently
working on The Factory, a performing arts complex
in Manchester, OMA’s irst major public project in the
UK, on the site of the former Granada TV Studios.
‘I like making things happen,’ says van Loon. ‘I like
challenges and risks. I like projects that everybody
thinks are absolutely impossible. That is where my
drive comes from – to make impossible things possible.
I will ight for what I believe. And if I don’t win the
ight on day one, I just keep on repeating it until I do.
I never give up.’
This desire sees her revel in big and complicated
public projects – of which OMA has an abundance.
It is also what drew her to her latest built work,
the design for a mixed-use building in Copenhagen,
called BLOX – a commission by local philanthropic
organisation Realdania to house the Danish
Architecture Centre (DAC), which it funds, along
with further oices, housing, underground parking,
leisure and retail. »AN ARRANGEMENT OF
STACKED BOXES ON THE
HARBOURFRONT, THE
BLOX BUILDING FEATURES
22 RENTAL APARTMENTS
AT THE TOP, THE DAC IN
THE CENTRE AND RADIATING
OUT TO THE BUILDING’S
EDGES, AS WELL AS AN
URBAN INNOVATION HUB, A
GROUND-FLOOR RESTAURANT,
UNDERGROUND PARKING,
AND OUTDOOR PUBLIC SPACEArchitecture
106 ∑