Spring House Amsterdam

Meer over Spring House Amsterdam

Ruyterkade 128 on the waterfront in Amsterdam is an industrial structure with few standout features. View it as a house, however, and it takes on a whole new character.

This fresh perspective inspired MüllerVanTol in transforming the building into Spring House, a cross between a private club and a multi-tenant workspace. With a footprint measuring 16 by 24 metres, the former factory and distillery now contains a 1,450-m2 workplace, lab and platform for small, innovative companies. They form a community of members attracted to a venue that promotes sharing ideas in shared spaces.

MüllerVanTol remodelled the floors to create a family of rooms that lend the complex a domestic feel. Just as a good house is made up of different spaces for different activities, Spring House consists of larger and smaller spaces that allow occupants to find the right setting for every occasion and type of work — large/small, open/closed, short/long, individual/group, public/private. In that way, occupants can make the interior their own though a process of appropriation.

On the ground floor is the kitchen, in the form of a Restaurant Choux. A generous stairs rises to the open-plan living room on the first floor. Above that are studio and atelier floors, and at the top is a new roof structure in the attic.

The striking red façade? Neighbouring buildings have architecturally distinctive fronts, but Spring House needed an injection of colour to make it stand out on the street.

Foto’s: Jordi Huisman

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