In the courtyard of Het Funen, a new residential neighborhood with approximately 550 homes, stand sixteen different residential buildings. Verdana is one of them with ten homes. The urban design plan by De Architekten Cie. prescribed three stories for this block, of which half of the third floor had to consist of a roof garden.
The design principle behind Verdana was that the ten ground-level homes would be roughly the same size. The homes are arranged back-to-back and face a central corridor in the middle of the block that provides access. By placing the functional spaces in the “dark” part of the building, the homes were able to open up to their surroundings. To give all homes the same amount of volume, some homes were elongated and have fewer stories, while others are shorter and therefore have more stories. Patios provide natural light and unique outdoor spaces. The “fifth facade”—the roof—is covered with moss and sedum, transforming it into a rooftop garden.
To create more visual space from the block, the entrance hallway has been placed diagonally. As a result, it does not visually dead-end into the facades of the adjacent blocks, but instead connects two open spaces.
As if a handful of dice has been thrown, they lie seemingly randomly scattered across the Funenpark, sixteen small blocks containing ten to 24 homes in the triangle between the railway embankment and Cruquiuskade. The last one, Verdana, was completed last year and is immediately the most eccentric.
Architect Frits van Dongen had brought together eight very distinct other architects who, through mutual consultation, had to create strongly competing yet very special buildings. Together, however, they still had to form a single residential park. Remarkably, over the past three years, one of those designs at Funenpark has consistently been in the top ten of the Amsterdam New-Build Prize.
"This had not been done before in Amsterdam," says Kamiel Klaasse (44) of NL Architects. "Van Dongen set very strict boundary conditions: every plot had to be completely built upon, and on top of that, at least half of the homes had to have a roof garden. We even have roof gardens for all ten homes." And what roof gardens! Anyone looking around on top of the strongly undulating roof, covered with green sedum, would imagine themselves in the Alps.
The residential park, a joint project by construction company Heijmans, housing association De Key, and Van Dongen, is now truly finished after ten years of work. Rightfully a park, completely car-free, with specially designed unique paving tiles for the paths amidst the greenery. A private garden is not needed here at all. Also unique is that this is a piece of the city without leasehold; the former shunting yard for the port was bought directly from the Dutch Railways (NS). Irene Nederlof (33) paid 620,000 euros for the 152-square-meter home in Verdana where she lives with her husband and young daughter. The parking space in the basement along the railway embankment cost an additional 45,000 euros.
They moved out of an upstairs apartment, four floors up in the Transvaalbuurt, because it was getting too small, at 62 square meters and only one bedroom. Because of their work, Nederlof and her husband specifically looked in the east of the city. “We cycled here on a nice day and even then we got a good idea of what it would look like here.”
Choosing the most desirable home was quite a puzzle, because all ten in Verdana are completely different, yet they all have the exact same number of square meters. Imagine a cube with a hallway running diagonally through the bottom, with five homes on either side. One then gets a large floor area and just two stories, while another gets four floors to reach that same area. Hence the mutual difference in height, further emphasized by the undulating roof.
“I have seen to my great pleasure that a number of residents have radically overhauled our ideas about the layout,” Klaasse says. “That is what I find so interesting about this project. Actually, we have offered ten different caves for highly inspired cave dwellers.” “Verdana has become the showpiece of the inner area,” believes William Rood (49), project manager at Heijmans. Before they started the project, he and his construction team visited all the architects to see how each building was put together. “The undulating roof, for example, placed special demands on the construction of the top floor,” Rood says.
The jury that selected the ten nominees was impressed by Verdana. “A striking project that truly brings innovation to the area,” judges jury member Ed van den Boogaard. The residents gave their building a 9.3. “Unique and futuristic,” they explained in the survey. “Architecture with a forward-looking appearance. And then ten completely different homes, in a park, a car-free play area.” “This house evokes an opinion,” says Nederlof. “You either like it or you hate it. I think that is important.”
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