July 23, 2019

Coloured flats for students ready to rent in August

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 9:50 pm

Pointed out to us on Twitter and for rent on Funda.nl, these colourful flats in Almere are meant for students. They consist of one room of 18 square metres of living space with everything in it and rent is 398 euro a month, excluding service costs.

The flats are nicknamed ‘space boxes’, a fitting name for housing in general these days, and should be ready to rent mid August. Students can only rent a flat for a maximum of eight years and need to get out six months after you finish your studies.

In the meantime, from various sources, international students are still flatly being discriminated against because they don’t speak Dutch, are not Dutch or people renting out rooms to them are bigots. Here’s what we wrote about that back in 2018.

(Link and photo: funda.nl)

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May 1, 2019

Dutch designed play area at Singapore airport

Filed under: Architecture,Aviation by Orangemaster @ 9:18 pm

At Jewel Changi International Airport in Singapore at Terminal 1, Canopy Park, you’ll find a play area for all ages, with four very big slides, designed by Dutch engineers and street furniture designers Carve from Amsterdam. The official opening is on 10 June, and everyone will be able to see how the first children and parents will enjoy the play area.

Carve’s Discovery slides look very much like jewellery you can play on. “The rubber patterns on the floor are designed in such a way that they create spiral-shaped dynamic reflections on the surface of the slides, which will surely end up all over instagram.” They are installed at the highest point of the airport and provide a spectacular view. There are four slides: a family wide slide, a free fall slide and two spiral-shaped tunnel slides.

For anyone in The Netherlands and not in Singapore, you can climb onto Carve installations in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, the Ark Park pavilion in Utrecht, the Strijp S grounds in Eindhoven and the red fence square in The Hague.

(Links: bright.nl, Photo: businesstraveller)

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April 24, 2019

Utrecht’s Dom church attic open to the public

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first,History,Religion by Orangemaster @ 11:24 pm

On 5 May, the attic of the Dom Church (“Domkerk”, in Dutch) in Utrecht will be open to the public for the very first time. And as of that date, people can enjoy one-hour tours every Sunday starting at 14:30. RTV Utrecht went and took a peek:

The Dom Church is about 32 metres high, up to the highest part of the choir vault. Half way up there’s a gallery where nobody has ever been before until now. Utrecht’s well-known symbol was once the Netherlands’ largest church, but the nave collapsed in a storm in 1674 and has never been rebuilt, leaving the tower isolated from the east end.

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January 5, 2019

Sexing up Amsterdam real estate with French names

Filed under: Architecture,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:59 pm

Amsterdam real estate is in the hands of a selected few, including Prince Bernhard who owns a staggering 349 buildings in Amsterdam.

In the neighbourhood of ‘Bos en Lommer’ (aka Bolo, where 24HQ is located), a bunch of tall flat buildings are coming and will be sold to whomever can afford them: either rich Dutch folks or rich foreigners, the latter being bashed for buying houses that Dutch people in Amsterdam cannot afford, as if that was a new thing. And if rich Dutch people buy them, there’s much less bashing somehow.

And selling nice houses in a good neighbourhood needs a sexy name, n’est-ce pas? The brochure that is doing the rounds and making people laugh out loud swaps out ‘Bos en Lommer’ for a poor French translation, ’Bois & Lombre’ (‘Bois’ like ‘Bos’ means either woods, wood or forest and ‘Lombre’, meaning ‘shadow’ should be spelled ‘l’ombre’. And ‘Bos’ in Amsterdam usually refers to a park with lots of trees because we don’t have forests, a prime example of a sexed up term.

There’s a beautiful Dutch word that describes when someone uses English to make a Dutch word sounds sexier: ‘aandikengels’ (roughly, ‘thickening English’, thickening as in pouring it on thick).

We’re calling it, as a new Dutch word is born: ‘aandikfrans’ (‘thickening French’), which has no Google hits as I write this.

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December 24, 2018

Reverse tower in Hilversum has more units on top

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 12:18 pm

Dutch architect René van Zuuk of Almere, North Holland has completed an apartment building in Hilversum, North Holland called The Belvedere Tower, featuring top-heavy apartment blocks arranged in a cross.

A maximum building height of 11 storeys means that a conventional tower would have yielded only 44 units, whereas at least 55 units were required to make the project financially viable due to the high cost of land.

Hilversum is the Dutch media and broadcast centre of the country, and a lot of people want to live in this town that is not only kind of posh (they have their own special letter ‘r’ when they speak), but also close to Amsterdam.

Van Zuuk is known for having designed a property for himself in an experimental housing district in Almere featuring geometric volumes arranged less than a metre from the waterfront. Van Zuuk’s studio also created the design of a fire station in Dordrecht, South Holland featuring an industrial material palette, and a pavilion down the street in Roosendaal that houses shops and offices under a series of timber terraces.

(Link and photo: dezeen.com)

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December 11, 2018

Keep the rotating house rotating or destroy it?

Filed under: Architecture,Art,General by Orangemaster @ 11:55 am

Ten years ago (where does the time go?), we told about the Rotating House (‘Draaiend Huis’) on a roundabout in Tilburg, North Brabant, made by John Körmelings. For quite some time now, the house hasn’t been turning anymore, as it’s broken, and fixing it would cost about 45,000 euro. The artwork cost 400,000 to build, and according to article on Vice.com (see link below), it broke down three times already. This would mean it has been fixed at least twice.

Sadly but not surprisingly at the moment, the Netherlands has a government that doesn’t like high art too much and feels that much of it is overrated. Since Dutch cultural institutions are dependent on government grants as opposed to endowments, sometimes people who don’t like art get to decide what lives or dies art-wise.

There’s currently a discussion about whether the rotating house should be fixed or destroyed. The city of Tilburg wants to fix it, but local youth politicians say the money can be better spent elsewhere like in healthcare. If the house is destroyed, then a lot of money would have been spent for nothing, whereas fixing it up means keeping a world-famous artwork turning for others to drive past and talk about.

Here’s a timelapse video of the ‘Draaiend Huis’ (‘Rotating House’)

(Link: vice.com, Photo: Stinkfinger Producties)

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November 4, 2018

Indian party mistakenly uses pics of Dutch bridge

Filed under: Architecture,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:22 pm

Yesterday evening, the official Twitter account of the Aam Aadmi Party, an Indian political party and currently the ruling party of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, posted a tweet saying, “Delhi! Here is your pride The Signature Bridge”, with a couple of pictures, one of which was of the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam – the one on the left shown here.

India Today fact checked the photos and corrected the situation quickly by posting a YouTube video, entitled “Illumination of the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam”, featuring the exact frame the AAP tweeted, at 0:27.

I’m wondering how nobody from the AAP noticed that they had a photo that didn’t match their own skyline or they just thought ‘the common man’, which is what the name of the party means apparently, wouldn’t notice. The bridge is said to be inaugurated on 5 November.

Tip: never underestimate your audience.

(Link: indiatoday.in)

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August 7, 2018

Mecanoo redevelops old gasworks in Hilversum

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 3:27 pm

Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo is redeveloping the former site of the Regional Energy Supply Company in Hilversum, North Holland, which is now called ‘Villa Industria’, a neighbourhood with 357 homes comprised of mixed housing, small-scale businesses and sporting facilities.

According to municipal councilman Jan Rensen, Hilversum could potentially be getting a 21st-century monument. The ground that Villa Industria is being built on had to have a clear link with its past, part of which will include cylindrical apartment buildings intended to resemble the dismantled gasholders.

The various buildings that occupy this 74,000 m2 plot are linked by the use of red brick, and include shapes, materials and details intended to directly reference the history of the old gasworks, the most prominent of which is a cluster of three residential buildings enclosed by a cylindrical steel frames that mimic the shape of the gasholders.

Interestingly, the area Villa Industria is being built on used to be outside of Hilversum and was empty for quite some time, but thanks to the city’s continued expansion, it is now part of Hilversum. The forest is also within walking distance. Rensen hopes this new neighbourhood will attract new people to the country’s media city: Hilversum is where most Dutch television and radio is produced and broadcast.

(Links and photo: dezeen.com, de-alliantie.nl)

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May 30, 2018

Eindhoven to boast world’s first 3D printed homes

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:32 pm

Next year, the city of Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant will apparently have the world’s first 3D-printed concrete homes. Six parties are involved in the project: the municipality of Eindhoven, Eindhoven University of Technology, Van Wijnen from Rosmalen, Vesteda from Amsterdam, Saint Gobain-Weber Beamix, and Witteveen+Bos from Deventer.

The project called ‘Milestone’ will have five houses erected in the neighbourhood of Meerhoven, designed by Houben/Van Mierlo architects. The homes will look a bit like henges or even statues in a green garden and have a bit of a Flintstones house feel to them, according to Houben/Van Mierlo and the image above.

(Link and photo: studio040.nl)

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April 18, 2018

3D-printed bridge for Amsterdam takes shape

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 5:53 pm

mx3d-robot-printed-steel-bridge-completes-span-amsterdam_dezeen_2364_col_16-1704x2573

Back in 2015 we told you about Amsterdam getting a 3D-printed steel bridge, and apparently printing the structure is now finished. The 12-metre-long bridge will eventually cross a canal on the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam’s Red Light district and you bet we’ll check it out once it’s installed.

MX3D aims to have finished the printing, placing the deck and coating the bridge by October 2018 in time for Dutch Design Week. In the mean time, you could sneak a peak at their workshop in Amsterdam North at the NDSM wharf if you’re in the neighbourhood.

(Link and photo: dezeen.com)

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