Luis Fernández-Galiano   The flat Netherlands have reached a peak. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist which rates the business environment of countries, the Netherlands today are at the top of the list. In this league table, which

Wouter Vanstiphout   September 1998. Piet Mondrian’s very last painting was shipped from publisher Si Newhouse’s bedroom to the Municipal Museum of The Hague. The painting is called Victory Boogie Woogie and Mondrian was working on it until the day he died in New York in

Peter Buchanan   Amsterdam is a city of still water (its harbour linked to the sea by canal), while the waters of Rotterdam go in and out with the tide.” This is how the Dutch explain the differences between their first and second largest cities. Both cities are part

Kenneth Frampton   The architectural development of the past fifteen years has made it clear that in its essence modernism is not a visual stylistic canon at all, but a dialectic philosophical position in relation to the reality of culture. The modernist position is an

Rem Koolhaas   A review is intended as a private, priviliged communication between writer and public. If the writer is an architecture critic, the architect(ure) discussed is merely the subject – spoken of, but not addressed. Reading a review of one’s own work is l

Hans van Dijk   At what age are you still a young architect? Several answers have been proposed: young equals under forty; you are young when you haven´t yet built your first big building. Young architects cannot afford to refuse commissions. Young architects, the

Michael Speaks   Dutch architecture has become as prominent at the end of the 20th century as it was at the beginning of the century; perhaps more importantly, it is as responsible for developing a new approach to contemporary modernity as it was in helping to initia

The most influential teacher for Wiel Arets (1955) was the Belgian Geert Bekaert, who taught architectural history and theory at Eindhoven and from whose classes Arets remembers always leaving with a new book to read. He also quotes travels and conve

Wiel Arets   Netherlands   The police station in Cuijk, as in the one at Boxtel, establishes a more open relationship between the police and local residents by using a glass skin with different possible grades of visual permeability. In Boxtel, the lines of the building have b

Wiel Arets   Netherlands   A perforated aluminium skin modifies the outside of the existing complex and creates new semipublic areas in the interior of the building. Out of the reorganisation of the old dwellings come 98 new apartments of six different typologies (open plan or

Wiel Arets   Netherlands   The project has a decidely urban vocation. It is based around the concept of ‘highness’ and vertically houses a program which allows the merging of a local tradition with a universal model...

Having trained at Delft Polytechnic, Felix Claus (1956) and Kees Kaan (1961) joined together in 1987. They have 35 employees in their office in Amsterdam and the two partners share the same teaching background; at the Berlage Institute and the Amster

Claus en Kaan   Netherlands   The renovation project of the Calslaan residences, a complex of four buildings constructed in 1965, has modified the arrangement and the size of the rooms and has also altered the composition of the facades. The white plasterwork, as much as the open

Claus en Kaan   Netherlands   The storey at the point of the arrow and the artifice of the bands on the glazed southern facade make the tower appear slimmer. The structural walls are faced with metal sheets painted to camouflage their presence in the park...

Claus en Kaan   Netherlands   The project provides an alternative to other types of large scale accommodation by proposing a hybrid of terraced houses with two residential units per floor and metropolitan apartments...

Until members of the next generation came to dispute his title, Ben van Berkel (1957) was the enfant terrible of Dutch Architecture. He studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Architectural Association in London, and worked in the off

UNStudio   Netherlands   The asymmetric composition and the perforated aluminium skin of these constructions accentuates them as objects; they are signposts more than buildings...

UNStudio   Netherlands   The slender concrete volume of the control post has a translucid, metallic skin that leaves one guessing about the interior...

UNStudio   Netherlands   The project adapts to the sloping topography of the area and the station is seen as a new gate into the city; a large courtyard serves as the connecting element between the different parts of the program. The importance given to natural light, the de

The Dutchman John Bosch (1960) qualified from Delft Polytechnic, and the Englishman Gordon Haslett studied at Liverpool and Oregon Universities. After working for several different architects, they coincided in the New York office of Richard Meier. T

Bosch Haslett Architects   Netherlands   In this residence for the families of children in hospital that is constructed on the university campus, the irregular geometry of the plans allows the maximum contact with the exterior of all the spaces...

Bosch Haslett Architects, Bosch Architects   Netherlands   Situada en un céntrico barrio de Rotterdam y liberada desde 1994 del tráfico en superficie, la plaza Binnerotte (50 metros de anchura por 500 de longitud) es el escenario de un concurrido mercado que la abarrota un día a la semana, permaneciendo el r

Bosch Haslett Architects   Netherlands   The water pumping station was conceived as a large continuous, undulating surface, a black desert measuring almost a hectare dotted with public services like telephone boxes and public toilets. The nine wells from which the drinking water is extracte

While still a student at Delft, in the era of Herman Hertzberger, Carel Weeber and Rem Koolhaas the Belgian Willem Jan Neutelings (1959) started working for the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. After 5 years with OMA, Neutelings opened his own st

Neutelings Riedijk Architects   Netherlands   Situated in the northeast part of the campus ‘de Uithof’, the building unifies the activities of three science faculties: class rooms, laboratories, department offices and a restaurant, around a large central vestibule. The longitudinal shape of the

Neutelings Riedijk Architects   Netherlands   The facade is composed of a plinth of black bricks with holes in them and a main body of glass panels printed with a text by K. Schippers. Looking through the glass panels one appreciates the reflective insulation. The V shape of the roof allows cert

Neutelings Riedijk Architects   Netherlands   Behind the glass skin of the ABN-AMRO bank in Amsterdam is a vertical city; a system of interchangeable empty spaces corresponding with the public zones which are distributed among the work areas. The residential towers projected for The Hague and Ro

The tradition of a country which has entirely reinvented its own territory could be said to be well represented by West 8. Adrian Geuze (1960) is the visible head and founder of this team which has its headquarters in Rotterdam. The company´s name de

Adriaan Geuze, West 8   Netherlands   The company Interpolis´s new garden is open to the public; the join between the building and the garden is resolved by a large plateau of slate slabs, punctuated with magnolias and crossed by a wooden bridge. The constant changes in the orientation o

Adriaan Geuze, West 8   Netherlands   The square is a knot of circulating traffic and pedestrians with train lines overhead, designed as a mosaic of grass and asphalt; the treatment of the columns which support the train lines creates an urban forest. Lighting is one of the key elements

Adriaan Geuze, West 8   Netherlands   The abandoned areas have been repopulated with a total of 60,000 birch trees. Contrasting pavement surfaces are played with in the central office entrance square...  

They design it like a chinese puzzle of housing types, gave it the paradoxical title “Berlin Voids”, and won a first prize in Europan. In 1991, after this project, Winy Maas (1959), Jacob van Rijs (1964) and Nathalie de Vries (1965), all Delft gradu

MVRDV   Netherlands   The headquarters of NTR (formerly RVU) is located on the business campus of one of the channels of the Dutch Public Television Broadcasting System, next to Villa VPRO. Although a four-storey building could be erected according to the building regulat

MVRDV   Netherlands   The project is part of some research into contemporary residential types that are capable of evoking the idea of old country mansions, conceived as island retreats within an a large expanse of green. Among four wooden platforms, the last of which is

MVRDV   Netherlands   This park project tries to make population density and quality of life compatible. They propose an ‘ecosystems of ecosystems’, a kind of patchwork of every possible type of nature and leisure activity... 

The studio – which is so far removed from the conventional idea of an architect´s practice – began with commissions from the publishing world, from art galleries and for video production. In 1990, Lars Spuybroek (1959), who had graduated from Delft w

NOX   Netherlands   This small pavilion dedicated to exhibit the water cycle is shaped by the fluid deformation of 14 ellipses. Here, architecture and information become an indivisible whole...

NOX   Netherlands   The traditional concepts of a seafront promenade and hotel with views have been discarded in this project based on mobility and lightness; as on the beach, everything is subject to the changes of the tide...

NOX   Netherlands   This project creates soundscapes with animation software which transform the noise barrier on the A58 motorway into a musical instrument whose strings vibrate with the passing traffic. The musical waves create the model for the volume of the houses,