A new school building in South Amsterdam, the Kindercampus Zuidas completed in October 2014, was pushed 30 metres further before the holidays to its proper place next to the first part of the same building in order to become one, as originally planned.

The first part of the Kindercampus was built at the right place behind a sports hall, so that children could have their urgently needed school and day care. Once the sports hall was destroyed, the second building was pushed into place 30 metres further, a tough task that required a specialist. It took 20 hours to move the one million kilo building 30 metres. The move was delayed due to high winds at one point. Depending on the sources below the fastest speed was either 2 or 3 metres an hour.

Nothing was removed from the school when they pushed it. The kids (click and scroll until you see them) were given a complete explanation by the director of the operation and were able to watch some of it from a higher nearby building. I like how the Dutch called him the ‘school-pushing director’.

Why didn’t the city destroy the sports hall earlier to avoid all these extra costs? Because the temporary sports hall, the ‘bubble hall’ where coincidentally I trained at for a few months, was only ready in September 2014 and the Kindercampus had to be delivered by October 2014.

Here’s a time lapse video of the unusual operation:

verschuiven KinderCampus from EmielBakker.nl on Vimeo.

(Links: at5, amsterdam.nl, Image and design: Hund Falk Architecten)