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A story about a place with meaning: the Amsterdam Navy Yard, which will open to the public in January 2015 after 350 years of secrecy. This booklet was created by the Navy Yard Team during the Summer School Thinking City held in Amsterdam in July 2014. For more information, please visit http://amsterdamnavyyard.tumblr.com
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Amsterdam Navy Yard
an impression of a secret place
Imagine a place that has been
closed for 350 years but will
open up tomorrow.
In every city, there are places that go unnoticed. They are there
physically, but they are not on our common mind map. There is
such a place in Amsterdam. It’s been kept so secret that they
have built a wall to prevent people from looking inside. It’s so
closed off that the key to the main entrance gate has been
lost.
Have you ever been to Hannekes Boom? When you were there,
chilling with your beer, gazing across the water, you didn’t
realise you were looking at 14 hectares of land that are currently
cut off from the city. Do you know that old wall you always
bike by on your way to work, close to Central Station? Ever
wondered what happens behind it?
It’s the Marineterrein, the Amsterdam Navy Yard, which has
been strictly for naval use until now and will open to the public
in six months, after 350 years of secrecy.
I know what you’re thinking: it’s the Navy Yard, she’ll tell us a
story about ships. But what we really want to tell you today is a
story about a place with meaning.
You have to imagine that the area you see now was once all
water. Yet it was the high technology of its time, it was the
place where marine culture was transmitted, where the Dutch
hegemony was created. The recipe was simple: a craving for the
exotic and its riches, a perfectly functioning naval production
machine, and a workforce to fuel it all. The Marineterrein is an
enclave in the center of Amsterdam that was the backbone of
Dutch dominance in the Golden Century.
But today, although the area is still an enclave that evolves
independently from the rest of the city, it has started to lose
its function.
As soon as this happened, architects and urban planners
started to dream about the Marineterrein. Plans of the area
where barely available, as a matter of fact the area was blurred
on googlemaps until a few months ago. So of course architects
could not experience the spatial qualities of the area as it was
not accessible.
Luckily we could and we did, as we visited the area last week.
I’m telling you: we’re not going to present a masterplan for the
area, we are not going to treat it like a blank canvas.
The reason for this is that
Amsterdam needs time to
rediscover and reclaim the site.
We only went there once and in that short time we saw loads
of interesting opportunities and qualities; so imagine if the site
could be visited by many more people many more times: each
trip you would discover new qualities, each time you would add
value to the area.
Drawing from the insights we gained from a range of
professionals in the fields of planning, architecture, ecology,
cultural interventions and more, we thought about what might
belong, or not belong, in this place.
But after reviewing the challenges and opportunities of the site,
what we realized was that it was the quality of the site, the very
essence of it, that was special and deserving of attention as
those who will actually be responsible for its future make their
decisions.
The quality of the Navy
Yard is that it is a space of
contradictions.
We see in it a web of paradoxes, from our own experience
of it being open yet closed, to each physical boundary and
contrast, to its rich history based on functions of modernity and
innovation.
Our perception of the simultaneous openness and closedness of
the site begins in its obscurity. It is a place which is both present
yet invisible, directly in the city centre yet not on the mental
map of the citizens. You can see straight onto it from across the
water, no fences, yet if you were to try to enter you would find
it behind a wall, a locked gate. It is like dazzle camouflage on
a ship - designed in such a way as to confuse the viewer into
believing it is neither accessible nor inaccessible, neither near
nor far.
This perceptual contradiction is manifested when visiting the
site. The physical space itself is full of character expressed in
contradictions. When finally passing through the threshold, it is
into an open and airy space. The feeling intensifies as you near
the water’s edge, opening out to an unhindered view of the city,
water and sky.
Yet while looking out on
this vista, you feel enclosed,
protected almost, on
manicured lawns strewn with
abandoned buildings.
Throughout the space, silence and the scent of old trees
pervades. There is, quite astonishingly, unique plant life to be
found behind the locked wall, a green but carefully maintained
wild environment. Meanwhile, the buildings, placed seemingly
haphazardly throughout the space, are a medley of old and new,
in use and out of use, locked and unlocked.
It is a walled garden with only one wall. The boundaries of site
are what separates it but also what connects it, as the water
that surrounds most of it is both its moat and its medium for
interacting with the city around it. The water’s edge is defined
sharply, but inside its amoebic cells float silently, awaiting their
evolutionary potential.
Over time, the site has also been contradictory in its use. It
has served a public function for a limited few. It has been a
secure area for years, mostly hosting private functions for
naval use, valued for its security and secrecy. This runs almost
counter to its history of connectivity, a central hub creating
and sending ships out to the ends of the world and the limits
of human knowledge. Shipbuilding was the latest technology,
the embodiment of innovation and craftsmanship. Then after
hundreds of years of building ships, the water was filled in with
land, and the marine element moved from the hands of the
shipbuilders to the minds of the naval administration.
And now, all of these incongruities will be open to the public.
In a city that will inevitably close in on such central real estate,
how do we prolong the integrity of this place’s identity while it
transitions piecemeal, grows “organically,” into another island
of Amsterdam?
How do we maintain the
special contradictory quality of
the space?
What will happen to the
Navy Yard once it opens? In
the coming years before it is
transformed irreversibly, what
should be done to survive the
limelight?
Will it need some help, some intervention, however gentle and
fleeting, to let it move through this transition period?
What would this intervention be? Should it take care of the way
people cross the perimeter, conquer the ground and station
themselves inside? How to capture the contradictions of this
unique space and keep them, making sure that the paradoxical
nature of the Navy Yard never gives way to ordinary, usual,
unimaginative planning?
The main gate to the Navy
Yard stood locked for so many
years that no one remembers
the name of the last person
who held the key in his hands.
It just became one of those secret doors in the city that you
walk by, wonder what’s behind it, want to open but just never
happen to have the key.
But what if you had?
What if everyone got his own personal key to the Navy Yard?
A key that would be linked to its story, so that opening the old
rusty gate would become a very personal, intimate experience?
Imagine this magic key.
Maybe you would use it only once, or maybe it would last
forever? Maybe only you would use it, or maybe it would work
only when shared with someone? Maybe it would open the gate
only when you are in front of it, or maybe it would work at a
distance? Maybe the key would be real? Maybe virtual? Maybe
it wouldn’t exist at all?
Or, what about a scenario in which the Navy Yard would become
an indispensable place in the city where nothing is missing?
[KEYS TO THE KINGDOM]
How to get people to
experience the feeling of
being in a space that is both
open and closed, locked and
unlocked?
Can the Navy Yard be shaped in such a way that when you
want to stay online for work or leisure, there is no better place
to be? That just like the waves that surround it, the radio waves
of connectivity are abundant, free, welcoming, making it a
natural point to work, create, innovate and start your journey of
exploration just like centuries ago?
[WIFI & NOFI]
At the same time it can provide exactly the opposite - having
myriads of quiet spots, sanctuaries, acoustic bars, Faraday
cages where no signal reaches you and no signal escapes from
you, where phones become silent, where laptops cease to
function, forcing you to look around, to look into yourself, to
start a conversation with the person standing next to you and to
share something that you never thought was missing, but might
become indispensable.
The Navy Yard revealed its rich history with each step taken.
Here is the evacuation area. Over there, docking is restricted.
Anchors, cannons, and sails scattered here and there. What
stories can each of these artifacts tell us?
What if there is a residency space for archaeologists, historians,
ecologists and other specialists to unearth, dissect and explore
the area? Will these specialists fill in the black pages of history
of this area? Will they finally be able to tell us how many
species of birds make their home atop the centuries-old elm
trees, or the material foundation that has enabled this man-
made island to exist? Imagine further that these experts will
curate interactive tours that introduce the story of the area
underneath the surface:
“As you look to the right, this helicopter pad just last year
transported the first lady of China incognito... As you walk left,
notice the naval flags atop the building where naval students
learned to signal...”
In time, the spatial qualities of the Navy Yard will be transformed,
but the intervention will establish a continuous mind map for
the visitors of today and of tomorrow.
[INVISIBLE STORIES]
So we’ve asked you to imagine a place that has been closed off
for 350 years but will open up tomorrow. A place that deserves
respect for its rich and complex past.
It is not a blank canvas for
developers to unfold their
master plans.
The qualities and location
of the Navy Yard should be
understood and reinforced
through its conscientious
design and use. Only then
Amsterdam can seize this
exclusive opportunity to add
this exceptional place to its
city centre.
This booklet was created by an international and
interdisciplinary team of urban professionals,
operating within the Navy Yard Studio of the
Thinking City Summer School 2014 in Amsterdam.
Studio Participants:
Alina Bibisheva RU
Evelyn Rose Ellis US
Gertjan Rohaan NL
Kim Ngoc Le US/VN
Marianne Bøe NO
Negash Gebriye Desalegn ET
Parima ‘Boom’ Kotanut TH
Susheela Sankaram US
Tero Konttinen CA/SF
Viola Petrella IT
Vladimir Bataev BY/NL
Studio Coordinators:
Jerzy Gawronski NL/PL
Juha van ‘t Zelfde NL/SF
Nathan de Groot NL
Radna Rumping NL
Roel van Herpt NL
Special thanks to Liesbeth Jansen and Thijs Meijer
of Projectbureau Marineterrein Amsterdam.
amsterdamnavyyard.tumblr.com
Amsterdam
July 2014