This apartment building, located on a prominent site opposite the Museum of the Tropics, completes the corner of a 19th century city block in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The client’s objective was to create a new apartment building catering to a contemporary metropolitan lifestyle.
The site’s triangular shape is reflected in the volume of the building, which houses commercial space on the ground floor and twelve luxury apartments on four upper floors. Each apartment is accessed via a light loggia that provides an orientation space, internally and externally, and avoids long corridors. Two types of dark natural stone with split-faced and sand blasted surfaces are combined with aluminium coloured metal panels and painted timber window frames to create a highly articulated facade. The floors slightly stagger in plan at the corner, overlapping to create a play of volume and shadow. A gradation in emphasis across the facades from vertical to horizontal, with predominantly vertical lines at the edges to a more horizontal treatment at the curved corner, responds both to the adjoining 19th century buildings and to the desire to create panoramic views from the corner of the building. In this way, the contemporary intervention pays respect to the existing characteristics of the site, whilst also creating a new kind of interior space and identity for the apartment building.