Tennis Club IJburg in Amsterdam has 10 clay courts, a tennis school, 1,100 members and now also a clubhouse designed by MVDRV for an undisclosed amount of money.

The clubhouse cleverly doubles as a roofless grandstand that seats 200 people. One wonders if MVDRV was perhaps a little inspired by a classic football stadium in their home town of Rotterdam, Het Kasteel (The Castle), which also has stands dipping around a space with windows.

The building was officially opened in August. The clubhouse has a bar, seating areas, and, to the side, dressing rooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, and storage space.

IJburg is new land, which allows the Dutch a rare opportunity to experiment with lots of fresh architecture in one place..

(Link: Arch Daily, Photo: MVRDV)

Dutch professional football player and coach Bob ‘Bobby’ Haarms is being honoured with a tram stop in the district of IJburg in Amsterdam. However, Amsterdam’s public transport company GVB couldn’t be arsed to check the spelling of his name, as an ‘r’ is missing.

The GVB has six more days to modify the sign before the Haarms family officially drives through a banner on a tram to unveil the tram stop. Haarmslaan is spelt properly online so far. Amusingly enough, the tweet is from a police officer and it’s not clear if she noticed the mistake.

(Link: www.at5)

Amsterdam wants to repurpose the abandoned sewage processing towers on Zeeburgereiland, an island that now connects the new island neighbourhood of IJburg with the city centre. One of the towers will become the Annie M. G. Schmidt house, named after the children’s book and musical song writing icon (1911-1995) who once famously said: don’t erect a statue for me, I’d rather you remember me with a playground.

The proposed giraffe in the image is likely to be a slide, after Schmidt’s song Dikkertje Dap (lyrics), in which a small kid uses a giraffe’s long neck as a slide. The new destination for the three towers was announced this week by Amsterdam city planning councilman and former student union leader Maarten van Poelgeest, writes Arch Daily.

Other planned uses for the buildings are “a theatre, a restaurant, an exhibition space, and shops,” writes Fast Company. Architects Arons and Gelauff are the culprits.

Source images: Arons & Gauluff, Google Street View respectively.

Tom Claassen made this rubber rhinoceros in 2004 and put it in a sluice in Amsterdam’s newest neighbourhood, IJburg (reclaimed in true Dutch fashion from the water—the neighbourhood that is, not the rhino). Several questions spring to mind, such as “wha?” and “brrr?” and I wish I had thought of it. Amsterdam.nl provides some answers (English), such as “first public art in the neighbourhood” and “visibility depends on the water level.”

Photo: Tom Claassen. Here’s what IJburg looked like in 2004 (Wikipedia). Via Trendbeheer (Dutch).

No Elfstedentocht for now. National weather institute KNMI predicts that Monday a period of thaw will set in, with wind coming from the South and from the South West. That also means that the country will not have had an official cold wave, which in the Netherlands is defined as at least five consecutive days of frost of which three dip below -10 degrees.

Somebody who won’t be skating for a while anyway is Eimer van Middelkoop: the defense minister broke his wrist during a 30 kilometer skating tour between Bleiswijk and Zevenhuizen, according to Nu.nl (Dutch).

Skating madness held the country in its grip the past weeks, but with the temperature dipping the lowest in the South, the madness spilled over to Belgium. The spokesperson for Vereniging De Friesche Elf Steden, the organizer of the Elfstedentocht, told BN/De Stem (Dutch) that most foreign journalistic attention stems from our Southern neighbours. One fanatic Belgian skater and past participant in the Elfstedentocht, Henri Jaecques, argues in Het Nieuwsblad (Dutch) that Flanders should have its own mythical skate race. “From Sluis to Ieper, 200 kilometer, and perfectly skateable.” The first part of that trajectory, a 16 kilometer strip from Sluis to Brugge, was declared officially open to skaters this weekend, according to De Telegraaf (Dutch).

Photo top: a chair in IJburg, Amsterdam awaiting the next novice skater or an ever grimmer fate.

Photo bottom: a frozen Noorderamsterkanaal.

Link: Weer.nl (Dutch).