New Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam
Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum
is being renovated and enlarged. Designed by A.W. Weissman, the building is
celebrated for its majestic staircase, grand rooms and natural lighting. These
strong points have been retained in the design along with the colour white
introduced throughout the museum by former director Willem Sandberg. The
existing building is left almost entirely intact and in full view by lifting
part of the new volume into space and sinking the rest underground.
Its entrance has been moved to the open
expanse of Museumplein where it occupies a spacious transparent extension. The
volume above the entrance with its roof jutting far into space has a seamless
sandwich construction of reinforced fibre. With this change in orientation and
the jutting roof, the museum comes to lie alongside a roofed plaza that belongs
as much to the building as to Museumplein.
An information centre, the library, a
museum shop and a restaurant with terrace on Museumplein are to occupy the transparent
addition. Below the square, the main feature will be a large exhibition hall of
some 1100 m2.
The exhibition room in the hovering volume is directly connected to the main
exhibition hall of the original building.
The Weissman building is to be
sensitively reinstated in its former glory as it embarks on a new life facing
Museumplein under one roof with the new addition.
Client
City of Amsterdam
Architect
Benthem
Crouwel Architekten
Gross
floor area
12000
m²
Start
design
2004
Start
construction
2007
Completion
2009
