TRAVEL TUESDAY 491 - ZAANDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

“To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.” - Daniel Libeskind

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Zaandam town centre has been radically revamped on the basis of an urban development plan by Sjoerd Soeters. Soeters reinstated the historical street layout, reconstructed an urban waterway and reintroduced atmosphere into the somewhat impersonal and dull town centre, employing magnified stylistic features of the historical Zaanse Schans village. The plan by Soeters incorporated a new hotel, the Inntel Hotel Zaandam. This can be reached by a quick and efficient 15-minute train trip from central Amsterdam.

The hotel, which stands on the Provincialeweg, is definitely the new centre’s eye-catcher. The building with 160 rooms and a conference complex was constructed in part on a viaduct. The colossal, twelve-storey-high hotel tower, essentially square in plan, is a monumental stacking and interpretation of various green-painted house types typical of the Zaan region, ranging from a stately notary’s dwelling to worker’s cottages. ‘The Blue House’, inspired by the work Claude Monet painted at Zaandam in 1871, is the ultimate attention-grabber. The overall result is striking. The varied fenestration, broad protruding sections and bay windows, and decorative white ridge-pieces lend depth and an expressive relief to the façade.

Wilfried van Winden, the architect, was born in Delft on 24 November 1955. He studied architecture at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), graduating in 1987. He co-founded the Molenaar & Van Winden Architecten bureau in Delft in 1985. Van Winden left this practice in January 2009 to establish a new, independent bureau WAM architecten. Besides his design for the Inntel Hotel, Wilfried van Winden's major projects include the Essalam Mosque (2010) in Rotterdam, De Oriënt residential complex (2011) in the Transvaal district of The Hague, and De Marquant residential development (2007) in Breda.