39_Claus en Kaan Architecten | Oostelijke Handelskade

Category
Netherlands

NAME

Project title:  Oostelijke Handelskade 

Recommending party
The project has been submitted by:

 Claus en Kaan Architecten 

 

LOCATION

Country: the Netherlands 

City: Amsterdam

Address:

AUTHOR

Designer or design team architects:

 Claus en Kaan Architecten 

DETAILS  

Lot surface area: 757 m2

Total area of the project: 10300 m2

Of which residential:  10300 
Public/communal areas: – m2
Facilities for the public: – m2
Business/trade: – m2
Offices: – m2

Number of residential units: 72
Typology of users: families

Construction costs (euro/square metre): 903  €/m2

Work started on date: 2001
Work completion date: 2004

OWNERSHIP 

Promoter: Ymere
Owner: Ymere

Description of the project: 

The chequered architecture of the Claus & Kaan housing complex in the Oostelijke Handelskade seems to be saying: what you see it what you get. The grid of concrete window frames makes no bones about what this object really is: an ensemble of housing units. At the same time, the monotony of the concrete frames conceals any variation in the ground plans of the flats.

The building, that contains 66 rented council apartments, is situated in the continuation of the area where the five-star hotel is located. In the past there was a virtually unbroken row of warehouses and industrial buildings here. Most of them have been demolished. The surviving remains of the dockside architecture are now incorporated in what by Amsterdam standards is a high densification of this former peripheral zone, for which Kees Christiaanse has drawn up the urban development plan.

The Claus & Kaan housing complex, which is in essence a simple block of flats, nevertheless evokes at least two other images. In its rationalistic simplicity it looks like an industrial building, while at the same time the refinement of the façade grid can be seen as a reference to the high-rise blocks that such architects as I.M. Pei were designing in the United States in the 1960s. Where the façade grid stops, these hints disappear and the building changes character. Here the shell has burst open and the building betrays the soft and warm side that its colours produce.