February 22, 2009
These handcrafted cabinets were designed by Dutch designer Ellen Seegers of BeeldenBouwers. The design company, founded with Arno Tummers back in 1999, creates unique objects for the home together and individually.
Oh the left hand-side, next to the blue cabinet a swing lamp can be pulled out. A lot of Dutch houses throughout the country have these pointy roofs that make it tough for any standard furniture to fit.
(Link: apartmenttherapy.com)
Tags: furniture
February 9, 2009
During a walk today cut short prematurely by the rain I came across these reflective spheres which are attached to a wall along a gated alley just off the Skutsjespad, across the ING head office. Does anyone know what they are there for? My guess is it’s some sort of art installation so that the people in the office building to the right have something more interesting to stare at than a blank wall. (You can see the ING House in the reflection of the left most ball.)
Yes, dear lazyweb, I did Google for the answer, but my search for skutsjespad balls “did not match any documents.” Anyway, it’s nicer to guess.
Tags: balls, ING, reflections, shiny
February 1, 2009
Architect John Körmeling has just won (Dutch) the pitch for a new bridge to the Pius harbour in Tilburg, beating two other agencies. His open design has a large, rotating counter weight house and big friendly illuminated letters that spell the name of the area. City hall thinks the view from the counter weight house will be “attractive.” Körmeling is the man from Eindhoven who designed and built the controversial rotating house artwork in Tilburg.
Building of the bridge should start in 2010. A small exhibition of the design will be displayed starting next Tuesday at Hoevenseweg 2 in Tilburg, near the other bridge across the harbour canal.
More imagery and background at Architectenweb (Dutch). Via Trendbeheer (Dutch). Photo John Körmeling.
January 30, 2009
Building bridges well is one thing, but how to maintain them? Rijkswaterstaat, the governmental entity concerned with building and maintaining roads and such, has offered a grand prize of 500,000 euro for the person coming up with the best scheme to renovate a bridge. Rijkswaterstaat isn’t satisfied with its own procedures. They especially don’t like the way their current methods hinder traffic.
According to the rules, anybody can participate, although if you read on you’ll discover that with anybody they mean anybody who is registered at a Dutch chamber of commerce. Another rule states that you must speak sufficient English and Dutch to be able to explain your plan. The ten best ideas will net their creators up to 100,000 euro to further develop their plans, and only one winner will get the grand prize of half a mil.
The deadline for the first round is April 10.
Link: Z24 (Dutch). Photo of the bridge to IJburg, Amsterdam by me.
Tags: bridges, competitions, prizes, Rijkswaterstaat, roads
January 29, 2009
You may have heard yesterday that New York City is celebrating is 400th anniversary and Amsterdam’s Mayor Job Cohen was there to give a speech. You may also have heard about the gift the Dutch are going to build in the form of a pavilion called New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion, designed by Ben van Berkel. It will be built in Battery Park, the Southern most point of Manhattan and “be shaped like a flower or a windmill, depending on your perspective.”
“Pioneers from Amsterdam settled into the Manhattan area and planted the seeds of democracy, entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of expression and freedom of religion in what we now know as New York, the unofficial capital of the world,” Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam said. “Amsterdam and New York share a commitment to quality of life. Amsterdam and New York share the same DNA.”
It doesn’t matter at all that Henry Hudson was an English explorer who just happened to be on a Dutch vessel trying to find a passage to Asia. Location, location, location.
(Link: nytimes.com)
January 26, 2009
The foundation that takes care of the Brederode Castle near Santpoort (close to Haarlem) is looking for a couple that will live in and maintain the property. Unfortunately, this is not as romantic as it sounds, as the castle itself is in ruins. Algemeen Dagblad reports (Dutch) that the foundation, Kastelenstichting Holland & Zeeland, is looking for someone who is married, who will maintain the grounds and the collections, and who will provide visitors with information and coffee. The “lord of the manor” will get to live in a house on the property.
As you can see in the illustration, Brederode was already in ruins in Hobbema’s time. The castle was built in the 13th century and given as a loaner to the Brederode family by the Count of Holland. In 1426 part of the castle was destroyed and its occupant, Lord Brederode, was forbidden to restore it, says Wikipedia. No idea if that rule still stands.
Job description here, in Dutch.
January 24, 2009
This bridge, which looks likes a huge flyswatter, is in Leeuwarden. It was designed by Bruggenbureau Van Driel and built in 2000 by Ballast Nedam and BSB Staalbouw. The way I figure it, it works as an ordinary drawbridge, except when you’re in a hurry, then it’ll flip you like a pancake (which is what you’ll look like afterwards).
This is the Slauerhoffbridge, named after a local poet. I translated his “Voor de verre prinses” once, but not very well, so I’ll just link to it.
Via Jalopnik. Photo by Van Driel Bruggenbureau, used with permission. Much more (and more recent) photos after the links.
Tags: bridges, drawbridges, driving, Leeuwarden, sailing
January 20, 2009
Last Sunday a group of thugs who were sharing a building complex in the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam with a group of squatters drove out the latter with the use of force, wounding three of the squatters. At the end of the fight, the police installed the squatters back in the building, and arrested 14 members of both groups. One of the squatters was taken to a hospital with a double fractured jaw.
The squatters told Parool (Dutch) that the thugs spoke Russian with each other and partly consisted of builders that were staying nearby. Quote thinks (Dutch) that the owner of the Vinkzicht buildings, Cornelis Komen, may have paid the thugs to drive off the squatters. Komen denies the allegations.
The buildings have had no designated use since 1972 until Komen bought the six buildings in 1999 for 1.6 million euro each, with the plan to wreck them and build a hotel in their stead. That plan came under heavy fire from the neighbourhood, which managed to convince city hall to declare the gables monuments.
The top floors of the buildings are rented out in so-called anti-squat constructions where a tenant gets a short-term lease typically at a low price. Sometimes, you can score magnificently large housing this way for a price way below the going rate of the average shoebox an Amsterdam resident calls their castle, though I hear that with the housing shortage in the city even the anti-squat rates have gone up.
Squatting is mainly legal in the Netherlands (albeit often frowned upon) because of a constitutional right to domestic peace. The police may not invade your home, even if your means to acquire the home may have been less than legal. The house owner must then go to court and prove they have a pressing need with their property to get the squatters evicted. Neighbours tend to prefer squatters over slowly decaying houses.
It’s been a while since I’ve heard of thugs being used to evict people. The university grapevine in Nijmegen had stories of students being evicted this way, but I cannot remember a single proven one.
This is one of those stories that spawns two new questions for every answer you find, so I’d rather field any actual questions our readers have.
Totally off-topic: many congratulations to Orangemaster for getting her Dutch driver’s license! Wootalicious!
Link: Radio Netherlands, the only medium I could find so far that thinks the fight was between two groups of squatters.
(Photo of the Kinkerstraat by Wikimedia user Ilonamay, some rights reserved)
Tags: crime, housing, journalism, landlords, squatting, thugs
November 1, 2008
Stani Michiels, artist by day and Python hacker by night, created a five euro coin using only free software for a design competion issued by the Dutch mint, and won. The coin, commemorating a rich Dutch architectural tradition, should be available nowish.
The coin’s obverse consists of a portrait of the queen made up out of the names of famous architects, and the reverse displays an outline of the country that doubles as a skyline made by positioning architecture books in a circle.
Michiels — a Belgian responsible for SPE-IDE, a Python IDE, and Phatch, a photo editor — outlines all the little design details in a long blog post, including the software he used (Python, of course) and the calculations and Google search results that went into this design. Unfortunately the mint would not allow Michiels to release the designs under the GPL license.
The Netherlands has a long tradition of meaningful and elaborately designed money, as we touched upon earlier.
Via LWN.net.
October 20, 2008
After having found out in July all about this nature accommodating fence on the Olympiaplein in Amsterdam, designed by Ruud-Jan Kokke, it was announced last Saturday that it won a Dutch Design Award 2008.
Out of 700 nominations, Kokke’s fence won a public space award for his one-kilometer-long fence around a big park/football field. It is the second time this year that the fence won a prize, as Kokke was also awarded the public award of the Design to Business Award 2008 together with the Oud-Zuid District earlier this year.
(Link AT5)
Tags: Amsterdam, Design to Business Award, Dutch Design Award, Olympiaplein, Ruud-Jan Kokke
