Though far closer to Germany than to the Netherlands’ capital of Amsterdam, Groningen is a quintessentially Dutch town. Composed of winding streets and canals lined with picturesque and mostly low-rise brick buildings, the historic center is surrounded by a ring of often insensitive late 20th- and 21st-century development that sometimes shocks in its brutal jump in scale and materiality. Commissioned by the municipality, the Kunstwerf (literally “art yard”), which provides rehearsal and administrative spaces for four local performance companies, is located at the junction of the old and the new Groningen, on the site of a former gasworks. When submitting their schemes, competition entrants had to take into account the substantial landmarked remnants of this past, which include a row of workers’ houses, a large electric-power station (already home to a renowned dance company, which is what prompted the creation of this performance cluster), a villa, and a small entrance pavilion, all dressed up in an eclectic livery of brown stock brick with stone and redbrick trim.