Tom Frantzen
Tom Frantzen (*1971; director FRANTZEN et al architects / Lemniskade Projects) In 1995 Tom Frantzen graduated Cum Laude at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the field of Architectural History and Theory on a thesis linking the creative strategies of the DADA movement to contemporary architecture. He started as an independent architect after winning the Charlotte Köhler Prize in 1996 for a range of projects at the intersection of visual art and architecture. Since then his office won several competitions and completed a number of high quality buildings. His project “De Keyzer”, 68 elderly housing apartments in a 19th century urban renewal area, was awarded the Zuiderkerk 2011-award for being the best housing project of Amsterdam. Since 2009 Tom Frantzen has taken upon a more entrepreneurial role by developing architectural projects from initiative to completion as an architect-developer. He founded development company “Lemniskade Projects” after winning the Sustainability Tender Amsterdam Buiksloterham with a highly innovative energy passive working-housing building. This project called “Patch22” is mainly constructed in timber, including the 30m high main structure. Since then several projects have been added to the development portfolio. Patch22 was awarded several prizes f.e. the WAN Residential Award 2016, a Green Good Design award, the Dutch Sustainable Building award 2018 and recently the Golden Pyramid 2018, the biannual Dutch state prize for excellence in commissioning work in the spatial disciplines. From 2008 until 2016 he was the chairman of the committee for Build Environment, Architecture and Monuments of the City of Utrecht, which advises the city council on the spatial qualities of all building activities in the area. From 2011 until 2016 he was appointed at the Creative Industries Fund NL as the chairman of the interdisciplinary advisory committee on Architecture, Design and E-culture. In 2019 Tom was appointed as member of the supervisory board of trustees at the Creative Industries Fund NL. Right from the start of his career Tom Frantzen combined his independent practice with academic lectureships at numerous Academies of Architecture and the Delft and Eindhoven Universities of Technology. Tom Frantzen aims at creating cross-links between the many faces of architecture and regularly speaks and writes about architecture, development and cultural phenomena. Linkedin: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/tomfrantzen
Why is Open Building important: We don’t know what the future will look like and we should design buildings accordingly. We should no longer the design extremely optimised and minimised floor plans for the average resident, because the demands of the average resident change quite quickly as recent decades have shown. From a sustainability point of view we can’t allow ourselves anymore to build structures that have to be demolished when they become obsolete due to changed circumstances in the future. Therefore we should design buildings as open structures in which multiple generations can easily fit their own way of living.
