year: 2010
client: Municipality of Amsterdam & SKOR
site: Sloterplas Peninsula, Amsterdam
commission type: invited competition
collaborators: Gabriel Lester (artist)
team: Marc van Asseldonk, Auguste van Oppen

The design brief for a temporary cinema and cultural centre along the Southern embankment of the Sloterplas proved to be a conceptual balancing act. For the creative interpretation and to provide an architectural and structural soundness to the design, artist Gabriel Lester collaborates with O+A. Balancing between a firm design brief, the requirements and desires of clients, users and residents, as well as the relatively limited budget, the result is a solution with an artistic and functional appeal. With an emphatic attention for the characteristics of the site, the temporary nature of the design, and a concept with cinematographic qualities; artist and architects seek an artistically convincing form and content, without losing sight of spatial, financial and social conditions.

Coupled with the desire to place the programme partially above grade level in the ambition to preserve the views over Sloterplas, the idea for the boardwalk is developed. Placed above grade level, the boardwalk is both an autonomous form and function, and simultaneously the infrastructure which connects the different cinema spaces to the cultural centre and the foyer. The elevated public space presents itself as a piano nobile, or an elevated space with vistas. This space simultaneously provides access to the complete programme of the boardwalk.

Aside from these characteristics, the boardwalk possesses a metaphorical quality, where the boardwalk’s symbolic and cultural significance show an interesting contrast. On one hand, the top is a designed space for public use which works as a promenade. On the other hand, the bottom is residual and the more consequence of the construction than a deliberately designed space. To rephrase: on the boardwalk one observes the world from above while being exposed to the elements while below, one feels withdrawn creating a sense of security. As a final but no less significant aspect, the boardwalk is a profound cinematographic structure, often used as a protagonist in cinema.

The entrance to the cultural space and the other programmatic elements are located under the boardwalk. Here, one experiences the most dramatic perspective. Seemingly entirely distilled from film, this perspective offers an intense rhythmic and musical impression. Through a phase shift in the sequence of columns, a cadence creates the illusion of a kinetic and physically transforming structure.

Finally, the Sloterplas Boardwalk is a proposition which foresees in the immediate need for a cinema and cultural centre along the embankment of Amsterdam’s Sloterplas. It is simultaneously a proposition for an autonomous artwork in public space, a communion of culture and nature, and the foundation for an intriguing spectacle.