Home > Magazine > Issues > #18 Nov/Dec 2007 > Studios & offices

Studios & offices

Studios in hoppers and offices on tracks

UTRECHT/AMSTERDAM (NL) - One of the things that makes former harbour areas so exciting are the objects that are left behind: the cranes, ramps, submarines, sheds and so on. Unearthly in shape and size, they are beguiling apparitions, though they do sometimes look rather forlorn. The warehouses usually find a new residential or cultural use but the harbour machinery is more problematic. For want of creative ideas, they are eventually demolished or at best left standing as a memorial to another age.

Studio NL-D came up with a new use for four old sand and gravel hoppers in Utrecht's former Veilinghaven. The renovation of the hoppers is part of their plan for an Historical Harbour that will include historical boats. They drew up the plan at their own initiative and submitted it to the city authorities who were so enthusiastic that they incorporated it into the redevelopment plan for the area. Now they have been converted into offices and studios.

Amsterdam architect Trude Hooykaas hit upon a novel idea for an office building when she was cycling past the former harbour area in Amsterdam North in 1997 and happened to notice a 270-metre-long overhead crane track. Inquiring about it at the city council, however, she learned that it was scheduled for demolition. With her hastily made sketch design Hooykaas succeeded in persuading the council to think again. The crane track remained.

Taking account of the limited load-bearing capacity of the structure, Hooykaas designed a lightweight glass box on stilts: an office building that for once impresses not by its height but by its length.