Driving down the Dutch highway I have seen overpasses for deers and I have heard of frog overpasses and tunnels, but this is a first for me too: the very first beaver tunnel in the country.

Yes, as of today, the wee village of Panheel (189 villagers) in Limburg has opened a 30-metre-long tube, 70 centimetres in diameter so that beavers don’t wobble down a busy street and get turned into road pizza. Not only have many beavers died, but they damage cars when then do because they are bigger and bulkier than they look.

The people and animal lovers involved believe that other small woodland creatures will use this tunnel as well. It cost 40,000 euro and was paid with contributions as well as tax money.

I have only respect for beavers, and OK, this one is darn cute. I spent part of my youth at summer camp tearing down their dams only to see them fully rebuilt days later. It was either portaging (carrying a canoe over your head because of lack of water or obstacles), with two 9-year-old girls lifting an aluminium canoe of 45 kg over their heads with backpacks for 2 kilometers through the woods being eaten by mosquitoes or tearing down a beaver dam that grows back like weeds and canoe on the water like normal kids.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of beaver by stevehdc, some rights reserved.)

A man from Nieuwegein near Utrecht had to be taken to the hospital last Monday after being hit in the head by a bicycle thrown from an apartment building, Telegraaf reports.

A fight on the seventh floor which the 18-year-old victim had nothing to do with resulted in a bicycle being thrown off the balcony. The victim was about to enter a car for a driving lesson when the bike partially hit him and the car.

The victim has filed charges for attempted manslaughter. The suspect turned himself in on Wednesday and was arrested, according to the Utrecht police.

(Photo by Mike Porcenaluk, some rights reserved)

This artificial island was concocted by Studio Noach (what’s in a name?) and Anne Holtrop, and is based on recycled polystyrene.

The intended purpose of the island is to house a wellness centre in the IJ lake near Amsterdam.

For many tourists the image of Amsterdam as one of a city where you can celebrate your bachelor party but not your honeymoon will change when the city can offer a wellness arrangement without its equal in the world.

That sounds like a perverted marriage of the ideas of Robert-Jasper Grootveld (who came up with floating, polystyrene gardens long before Studio Noach, and was taken to his grave on one), and that of the current city government which wants to turns Amsterdam’s lively ecosystem of opinions and ideas into a sort of super-controlled Disneyland for rich tourists.

The walls and roofs will be covered in plants and flowers. [...] [The island will be located] just 6 kilometres from the Grachtengordel (’Belt of canals’), to be reached by shuttle over land or directly over the water.

(Source image: Studio Noach. Link: Ecofriend.)

A 38-square-metre house for low income families in The Hague was converted into this studio apartment by Robert-Jan de Kort (RDKA) and Teun van den Dries (Eckhart).

It can be rented for 155 euro a night, smoking and shoe-wearing not allowed (Maff provides you with fluffy slippers). The price per night goes down the longer you rent the apartment. Facilities include a car park, wifi, coffee, and a library of 100 films.

(Source photo: Maff.nl. Link: Bright.)

The owner of an Amsterdam canal apartment had to suffer the indignity of just seeing a wall whenever he looked out of his bathroom window, so interior designers i29 fixed that for him: they added a vertical garden to the wall.

This was enough to land them the Bathroom Design Award 2010 in the Home category. (Unfortunately, the entire ’site’ is made of Flash, so I cannot link to the 2010 page directly. Just click “Winnaars 2010.”)

The other category, Hotel, was won by Marjolein Garritsen for the bathroom in the Ilyushin Il-18 based hotel room we wrote about two weeks ago.

(Photo: Horizon Photoworks, used with permission. Link: Bright.nl)

The way the Dutch viewed their national airport Schiphol has changed over the years. From the starting point of an adventure, it became the nuisance in the backyard. The Bijlmer disaster of 1992, when victims living (and dying) in Amsterdam’s biggest ghetto were pushed into a secondary role to El Al’s secret cargo, really helped define this latter view.

However, Schiphol’s own ambitions are radically different. Instead of becoming a smaller, gentler airport, it wants to become the major air traffic hub of this part of Europe. People therefore started to look at alternative locations for the airport, not as close to the most densely populated area of this densely populated country. An idea that keeps floating to the top is that of an airport in either the IJsselmeer or the North Sea, even though the Ministry of Transport and Water Management concluded in 2003 that a second national airport was superfluous, for now. Such a water-bound airport could be an artificial island, or a mega-floater.

In 2007 Haskoning and Van Oord, who helped build artificial islands before, proposed rotating, floating landing strips (see illustration). And last week, Jan van Kessel got his PhD for a study into the stability of mega-floaters made of hollow, upside down, concrete ’shoe boxes’, apparently, 50% more stable than traditional barges.

And even though the government has declared the debate redundant, the Dutch keep dreaming of their airport at sea.

This is the inside of a popular Soviet era airliner, the Ilyushin Il-18, which was turned into a big hotel room at Teuge Airport.

It’s got a whirlpool, separate shower, infrared sauna, mini-bar, 3 flatscreen TVs, and so on.

For more remarkable hotels in the Netherlands, see here.

(Source photo: Hotelsuites.nl. Link and more photos: Gizmodo.)

Plans for a 262-metre-high skyscraper proposed for the Utrecht neighbourhood Leidsche Rijn have been scrapped, Volkskrant reports. The city of Utrecht felt the risk of such an undertaking was too high in this time of crisis.

The building, which would have housed both apartments and offices, raised a storm of protest when it was first proposed. People feared that because of its height it would have been visible from as far as 60 kilometres away, dominating the view all around Utrecht. The general contractor was informed of the municipality’s decision earlier this year.

The skyscraper, designed by Architecten Cie., would have been called Belle van Zuylen after a Dutch renaissance writer of the same name who used to live in nearby Castle Zuylen.

The tallest structures in the Netherlands overwhelmingly remain masts for transmitting radio and TV signals, according to Wikipedia. The tallest habitable tower is the Maastoren in Rotterdam, at 152 metres.

(Source image: Architecten Cie. Project website: bellevanzuylen.info.)

OIII Architects from Amsterdam designed this bank building for a competition for a new bank in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In the end, it was the design of German architects Henn that won, but the OIII entry still looks pretty amazing.

(Link and source image: Designboom.)

The nice red Dutch bike that could, Drooderfiets, bikes in and around Amsterdam and blogs about its architectural, cultural and interesting findings in English and French. The puppet master is Alix, a French guy living in Amsterdam who takes very nice pictures with his bike in every one.

Disclaimer: I know Alix and I admit we should have written about him and his bike a long time ago. What’s nice about this blog is that not only does the red bike learn things, but so do we, Dutch or otherwise.

Check out all kinds of other pictures on the red bike’s Flickr page.

(Link: rooderfiets.tumblr.com, Photo of Kruiskerk, Amstelveen by Drooder Fiets)