WIENER & CO
Arons en Gelauff Architects
ARCHITECTS
Arons en Gelauff Architects
CLIENT
Terra Ontwikkeling/Heijmans Vastgoed
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Swinn
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Hosper
COLLABORATORS
Jan Bart Bouwhuis, Joost van Bergen, Menno Mekes, Maikel Rentinck, Theo Tulp, Juliane Eick.
YEAR
2017
LOCATION
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
CATEGORY
Residential
SITE
A derelict plot along a canal in the centre of Amsterdam.
A history of factories (Wiener & Co) and shipyards (Eastern India Shipping Co).
BACKDROP
An economic crisis pushing the Amsterdam housing market into stagnation.
STARRING
A perceptive municipal urbanist allergic to gated communities. A developer willing to try anything to get production going.
-A group of neighbours of the NIMBY persuasion.
-An architect desperate for work.
-A dried-up housingmarket with the exception of rich boat-owners.
SUMMARY
The developer asks the architects what to build that will sail him out of the doldrums.
The architects propose a row of canalhouses to target Amsterdam boat-owners seemingly unaffected by the crisis.
The urbanist urges them to hush the neighbours protests by providing public access into the courtyard and to the canal.
The architects provide a space for playing and swimming on one of the former shipways. The other – currently a parking lot - is turned into a public pocketpark.
When the urbanist asks them to work with the site's history of shipways and the industrial architecture of successive centuries the developer thinks his clients – if any – will not like the use of “shipping materials” like corrugated iron and untreated timber panelling.
The eyecatching project soars to a sales success in the middle of the crisis. The architect proposes a cladding of copper and zinc.
The children of the neighbourhood swim in the canal together with the residents. The courtyard provides a vibrant meetingplace for the residents of both the caanalhouses and the two cityblocks with apartments.
When winter comes the grated fence – designed to be closed only by night - remains locked all-day turning Wiener & Co into a gated community.
