At the hinge point between the old Spaarndammerbuurt and the new Houthaven plan, this apartment block forms the setting for a future lively square. Behind the brick facades are wide, open short galleries with voids. The eat-in kitchens are located here. The living rooms have spacious balconies oriented towards the large, sunny communal courtyard garden. The ground floor accommodates a supermarket, studios, the entrance to the recessed, semi-automatic parking garage, and other neighborhood amenities.
The project predominantly comprises social housing. For cost-saving reasons, it therefore features a simple gallery access. At both ends of the gallery, apartments extend to the street. The living rooms of these apartments and the lively, wide gallery with voids contribute to the vitality of the street. The delicate, sculptural brick facade with prefabricated brick elements in a traditional block bond is a homage to the nearby, unsurpassed Amsterdam School architecture with its solid brick surfaces. At the same time, the project clearly has its own, non-historicizing signature.
The Noordkop Spaarndammerdijk, the striking new building on the corner of the dike and the Spaarndammerstraat, might not need much propaganda at all. Architect Marlies Rohmer (50) and developer De Principaal have already received the Zuiderkerk Prize for it, the annual award from the professional jury. Rohmer was also one of the three winners of the Amsterdamprijs voor de Kunsten this year. It took an exceptionally long time for this building to be completed.
"I was approached by De Principaal ten years ago," says Rohmer. "I was already doing more for them, they are a pleasant client. They dare to experiment and are open-minded. That is brave."
That this project took so many years was partly due to the complicated location. "We had to build on a dike body," says Vincent van Goethem (58), the project leader of De Principaal, "while the old buildings on both sides had to remain standing."
That didn't work out, but the neighboring properties had to be rebuilt with the exact same facade after demolition. Behind them are now modern owner-occupied homes. Floris Regouin (31) has a 94-square-meter apartment for 360,000 euros, including a 25-meter roof terrace and a spot in the parking garage. Although there were 66 candidates per owner-occupied home and an open house attracted over a thousand interested parties, Regouin was lucky: he was immediately selected. The new building with the characteristic vertical facade houses, above a huge Albert Heijn supermarket and a tiny coffeeshop, twenty homes between seventy and 99 square meters; fourteen in social housing, and six owner-occupied homes. The tenants are over the moon in a beautiful apartment for around six hundred euros a month. For that, they have not only a spacious home, but also a large, private inner courtyard and a wide wooden gallery on the street side, hidden behind the facade. This forms the necessary buffer against traffic noise.
A beautiful building, with the large gallery and the amazing inner courtyard, the jury judged. “The total space is well utilized.” Only the white facade below did the jury members like less. Architect Rohmer is not dissatisfied with the slow development process in retrospect. The initial plan provided for purely large owner-occupied homes. “The fact that it was on hold for so long resulted in it now being designated for social housing. It’s a plus that people with less money can also live so beautifully right in the middle of the city,” she believes. “It’s really difficult when a process takes so long. You have to be careful not to lose momentum. But this project has truly become better because of it. I don’t mind re-evaluating things. It takes a lot of stamina, but that is rewarded.”
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