Until very recently the young Dutch architect Anne Holtrop had only built a few small
pavilions and various installations between art and architecture. Outside of conventional
architectural circuit and more related to the art installations these extremely poetic
pavilions consisted of small-scale spatial concepts and personal research on materials. However
the work of Holtrop took a leap of scale with two projects finished in 2015: the Museum Fort
Vechten in Bunnik (near Utrecht The Netherlands) and the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of
Bahrain for the Milan Universal Exhibition of 2015. The former a museum built within the
enclosure of the New Hollandic Water Line fortifications dug into the ground to create dark
concrete walled galleries opening onto a courtyard artificial. The second the National
Pavilion of Bahrain is enclosed by a tall concrete wall that contains an interior maze of
galleries corridors and gardens.
