year | 2012
place | Curaçao
category | Utiliteit
CTC
CTC Cruise Terminal Curaçao
"You only make a first impression once".
Our impressions are produced by our perception (meaning our senses) and by our imagination (meaning our ideas and ideals), thus resulting in our personally colored experiences and intuitions.
Which means that in designing a new cruise terminal, next to efficient logistics, one should also give a lot of attention to the aspects that influence the Curaçao experience.
In other words those prime impressions that a cruise passenger gets from Curaçao, will take back home with him, and talk about to his friends.
So in contemplating the strategic roll of Curaçao's new cruise terminal we should keep the above statement in mind. In architectural terms we have to design a facade to represent the Curaçao experience that lays behind. And, since this is a facade one perceives and photographs from a viewpoint high upon one of the decks of a cruise liner, it is not one of the four vertical facade's of a building, but the fifth facade, meaning the roof of Curaçao's new cruise terminal.
The design for a cruise terminal for two cruise liners is a roof that by its size (800 m), its ingenious structural simplicity, will become the largest billboard to represent the Curaçao experience as that of the island with the rainbow colors.
The roof structure intelligently shades the dockside, creating a climate that is much more friendly and relaxed, a climate that invites the cruise passengers to leisurely stroll around and feel at ease. It unites the kaleidoscope of different pavilions (that give an impression of the old Curaçao) under one roof. The roof is giving this dockside a clear order and a sense of orientation It orders the traffic circulation and the logistics on the land side, but at the same moment it catalyses local activities to take advantage of the still available (or newly created) seaside.
So it does not divide, but connects land and sea like a big colorful zipper when seen from above.
Design: 2012
Address: Cruise Terminal, Curaçao
Client: MIC. Marcellis Infra Consult NV
Project Team:: Jo Janssen, Prof. Ir Wim van den Bergh, Arabella El Ginawy, Ivo Rosbeek
Collaboration: Paul Spiertz, MIC. Marcellis Infra Consult NV