A high-voltage building that people usually ignore has become the most noticeable surface on its street.
There’s a type of building most of us ignore: a windowless brick box tucked into a neighborhood, humming away and powering the area without any sign or explanation.
These substations are designed to work, not to stand out, and most of the time they disappear into the background.
In Beverwijk, northwest of Amsterdam, Rotterdam-based Studio RAP has wrapped a power substation in hand-glazed ceramic tiles.
They call the project Powerwall, and it’s now the most eye-catching surface on the street.
Making the Invisible Visible
The substation itself, Switchstation Beverwijk, sits inside an ordinary residential area. It’s a live high-voltage facility, which means it was never meant to have visitors or be noticed. Studio RAP covered the exterior in 322 ceramic tiles that were 3D-printed by robots and hand-glazed. The tile shapes come from visualizations of the electromagnetic fields inside the building.
The tiled surface covers about 8 by 5 meters (roughly 26 by 16 feet). Each tile was shaped based on electromagnetic field data, so the relief pattern across the wall reflects the energy inside the building.
A Glaze That Behaves Like Weather
Color is a key part of the wall’s visual impact. Studio RAP chose turquoise and teal glazes that were applied by hand. The tiles appear different depending on the time of day and the viewing angle. At midday, the surface looks pale aqua; in the evening, it shifts toward deeper teal. The way light hits the glazed grooves creates highlights and shadows that change throughout the day.
The glaze also picks up the surrounding environment. The blue sky and nearby buildings reflect off the surface, so the wall looks slightly different depending on where you’re standing. The overall color shifts based on the angle of view.
Letting the Kiln Have a Say
What makes the project interesting is that the studio didn’t just use machines to produce a neat, uniform result. They let the kiln introduce variation. Ceramics fired at high temperatures are unpredictable — the glaze moves, bubbles, or settles unevenly depending on temperature and timing. Studio RAP accepted that, so no two tiles on the wall are identical.
Studio RAP designed each tile in advance to work with how clay actually behaves when fired. “The intense heat of the kiln transforms the raw material, meaning the final piece is never an exact sterile replica of the digital model, but rather an organic, highly characterful architectural element,” the studio explains. Every panel and tolerance accounts for this unpredictability. No two adjacent tiles look identical under changing light.
A Studio Rewriting an Old Dutch Tradition
Studio RAP was founded in Rotterdam in 2016. The studio specializes in ceramic design and fabrication, using digital tools to create forms that are then produced by robots or hand-finished. Past projects include building facades, furniture, and interior installations.
Powerwall is the first time Studio RAP has applied this approach to public infrastructure. It’s a fairly straightforward idea: if a building has to exist in a neighborhood, it might as well have something worth looking at on it. The ceramic wall does that without pretending the building is something it’s not.
Powerwall by Studio RAP. Beverwijk, Netherlands, 2026. Photography by Pim Top.
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