Posted June 20, 2024

Photo Report City Icons Amsterdam

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Housing Highlights

In the weekend of May 24-26, 2024, City Icons made its debut with Amsterdam Housing Highlights: ninety architecture lovers and modern house museum professionals from 14 different countries joined our exciting sold out new event! They explored Amsterdam’s avant-garde homes from the 20th and 21st centuries, and enjoyed a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at privately owned homes not usually open to the public. Inspiration was guaranteed!

Browse our photo report and revisit last month's sell-out City Icons debut in Amsterdam. Happy memories if you were there and a taste of a fantastic trip if you weren't! Many thanks to our photographer Els Zweerink for capturing these moments, and a big thank you to all the museums, architects, homeowners and volunteers whose efforts made the weekend such a success!
We enjoyed exploring Amsterdam’s unique residential architecture – from its Golden Age roots in the 17th century, to the modernist social housing heritage, and its present-day fruits in the form of contemporary residential projects with the wow factor. Experts put everything in context and told us what to look out for on the tours.

This small but significant tour conference was open to anyone with a passion for architecture and will from now on take place in the years between the biannial Iconic Houses Conferences. Cultural enthusiasts enjoyed a fascinating behind-the-scenes experience while museum professionals benefited from an intensive weekend of knowledge-sharing about museum management and insightful discussions with colleagues. Visits to modern house museums and tours guided by experts opened up a new world. As well as visiting Amsterdam’s modern house museums, this programme offered a unique opportunity to visit the most exciting award winning housing projects of recent years, which are not normally open to the public.

Friday, May 24: Meet & Greet at House with the Dolphins

In the House with the Dolphins we found the perfect ambiance for the registration of the attendees: in the golden bend of Herengracht, we experienced the classic charm of Amsterdam’s historic canalside mansions. The house was built in 1686 by a tax collector from Haarlem. While the interior would have been much more austere back then, one prominent flourish it has always proudly displayed are the dolphins adorning the gable. Tracy Metz and Baptist Brayé now host events at their StadsSalon, which is so much more than just a venue. It’s their home. And they took great pleasure in welcoming us generously for a unique experience of Amsterdam, past and present. The Grand Salon and Golden Room were fully renovated in 2014, restoring the original 19th-century colors and replacing the heavily damaged ceiling painting with an interpretation of a 1708 painting by Abraham Bisschop based on the ancient Greek fable The Bird in Borrowed Feathers.

BROWSE THE PHOTOS OF THE KICK-OFF HERE

From Merchants to Modernists
After this festive meet & greet we glided together with the homeowners and volunteers, who helped make the visits this weekend possible, on a Canal Cruise through a wonderful example of 17th century urban planning: the beautiful canals lined by stately houses. These were built by rich merchants, but the streets in between were home to more humble workers, living in a style of comfort unusual for ordinary people at the time.
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Museum of the Canals, Philip Vingboons, Amsterdam, 1663-1665.
Photo courtesy Museum of the Canals.

Museum of the Canals:

Welcome Reception, Introductory Lecture and Private View

Our welcome reception was at the Museum of the Canals with a private view of the presentation and kick-off introductory lecture by architectural historian and urban planning expert Linda Vlassenrood. In her talk "Coming Home to Amsterdam: A Century of City Planning", Linda Vlassenrood introduced Amsterdam's extraordinary 20th-century history of city planning. She covered the period from Berlage's Plan Zuid (1915) to Van Eesteren's General Expansion Plan (1935) and beyond. She also focused on Jakoba Mulder who was instrumental in these developments as the first woman to head the city planning office.
Read our interview with Linda Vlassenrood in this link.
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Saturday, May 25: Eight House Tours and Exhibition

Saturday was devoted to the 20th century. While elsewhere the wealthy were building their extraordinary villas, in Amsterdam a series of visionary architects, employed by forward-thinking housing associations, were creating 'Palaces for the People': avant-garde modernist apartments designed for ordinary working folk. We explored 20th-century developments from the early modernist icons of the Amsterdams School, with their extraordinary expressionist brickwork, to the Live/Work Complex Tetterode, a survivor of the 1980s squatters movement and an experiment in alternative forms of co-living and co-working.

Amsterdam School Museum Het Schip:

Model Home, Slum Dwelling Replica and Post Office

Museum Het Schip Model Home, Michel de Klerk, Amsterdam, 1921.
Photos: Els Zweerink/www.elszweerink.nl.
BROWSE THE PHOTOS OF OUR VISIT HERE

Museum De Dageraad

Museum De Dageraad, Michel de Klerk, Piet Kramer, Amsterdam, 1923.
Exterior photo: Marcel Westhoff. Interior photos: Natascha Drabbe.
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Van Eesteren House Museum

Van Eesteren House Museum, Nielsen, Spruit & Van de Kuile, A'dam, 1952.
Exterior photo: Monique van Dongen. Interior photos: courtesy Van Eesteren Museum.
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The Skyscraper

The Skyscraper, J.F. Staal, Amsterdam, 1932. Photo: Arcam.nl.
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Live/Work Building Tetterode

Live/work building Tetterode, Merkelbach & Karsten, Amsterdam, 1950.
Photo top: Arcam. Photos bottom: Volkskrant.
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Zomerdijkstraat Artists' Studio Houses

Artists' Studio Houses Zomerdijkstraat, Zanstra, Giesen and Sijmons, Amsterdam, 1932-1934.
Photo top: Wikipedia. Photos bottom: www.zomerdijkstraat.nl
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Sunday, May 26: Housing Leads the Way

After visiting the Drive-in houses that where hyper modern in the 1930s, we returned to the present with a tour of some of the city’s most vibrant contemporary residential icons: MVRDV’s Valley on Zuidas, and Jonas by Orange Architects' and Sluishuis by BIG and Barcode Architects, both on IJburg. These are situated in new areas of Amsterdam – the amazing new city that is rising around the World Heritage site of 17th-century Amsterdam, with residential architecture once again playing a leading role.

With the global move to the city, and the increasing interest in social housing and new forms of co-living and co-working, these homes have much to offer us. We enjoyed to reconnect with our members and to meet new friends in a weekend full of tours that not only teld us about the past, but also inspired some ideas for the future.

Drive-in Houses - South Amsterdam

Drive-in houses, Willem van Tijen, Mart Stam, Lotte Stam Beese, Hugh Maaskant, 1935-1936. Photo top: Ossip van Duivenbode. Photos bottom: Stadsarchief Amsterdam.
BROWSE THE PHOTOS OF OUR VISIT HERE