Dutch Interior Architecture Student Wins Prize for Bathhouse

The Architects of Mourik Challenge Prize has been awarded to Dutch Royal Academy of Fine Arts (RAFA) interior architecture student Jan Willem Terlouw.

The Architects of Mourik celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2005. In that year, working with the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag, The Netherlands, they decided to create an annual challenge prize for final year students of interior architecture.

Three candidates were nominated out of 22 submissions. The competing candidates were selected for their ability to create designs that worked well imaginatively over the full range of building scales. The basis of Jan Willem Terlouw’s designs is the mutual compatibility of (interior) architecture and multimedia. According to the judging report his bathhouse design is an outstanding example. It transforms the idea of the roman thermal bath into a modern bathhouse.

‘One of the most remarkable features of the plan is the way it appears to ‘grow’ new bathroom design out of existing work. Old and new thereby acquire their own specific characteristics, while responding in a strongly integrative way to each other through some fine details in the passageways.’