In August 2022 I spent a week on a converted sea tug moored on Borneo Island in the eastern docks of Amsterdam. Borneo and its neighbour Sporenburg aren’t really islands but artificial peninsulas built in the late 19th Century as deep water docks. By the 1980s they had fallen out of use and a community of squatters grew up in the abandoned buildings and in houseboats moored alongside. Between 1993 and 2000 a master plan was implemented by landscape architects West 8 to redevelop the site for housing, an exemplary design that was influential on many subsequent regeneration projects.
Robert Prewett wrote his student dissertation about the redevelopment and we visited it several times during construction and its early occupation. After 20 years I was excited to go back and see whether it is successful as a place to live and as a piece of the city.
2500 new homes were created at a density of 100 dwellings per hectare, dense even by Dutch standards. 30% of the dwellings are for social rental and the houseboats were allowed to remain around the edges. In contrast to much recent urban housing it is low-rise, with a 3 storey limit, punctuated by two larger blocks, or ‘meteorites’ as West 8’s principal Adrian Geuze describes them. To achieve the density the houses are laid out in back-to-back blocks of 5m wide strips, a contemporary re-interpretation of the Dutch canal house. Each house is required to have at least 30% of their volume as voids to ensure good daylight and ventilation. Geuze refers to the sort of views familiar from 17th Century paintings by artists like Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, where you get glimpses into houses from the street through a series of domestic spaces and courtyards beyond.
Johannes Vermeer - Het Straatje (The Little Street) - 1657-58
Plan showing enclosed open spaces within the blocks - patios and courtyards
More than 100 architects have contributed designs, creating a varied streetscape that has a coherence due to the scale, the rhythm of openings and the use of brick. A few of the blocks that don’t face the water are a bit monotonous, but most have an engaging and dynamic elevation treatment, and each stretch has its own distinct identity. The houses have 3.5m high ground floors at the front and I remember the intention being that these could be inhabited as shops, workshops or home offices but almost all are just used as garages for cars or storage. Very few houses have solar shading and lots have big south-facing windows, so people had hung all sorts of sheets and fabrics up to try to keep the sun out.
The most well known image of the area is the row below where 60 ‘free parcels’ were sold to self-builders who were allowed to employ their own architects. On close inspection I don’t find many of the individual designs particularly remarkable but the overall effect is fun and engaging. It is also slightly exclusive because they are the only houses on the islands to have private access to the water. One of the greatest achievements of the development is that almost all the waterside is public and almost all the dwellings have some view to the water. Pavements are wide enough for people to inhabit and the roads are single-track with parking only on one side so cars are not allowed to dominate.
It is rare to find such a liveable and characterful neighbourhood so close to a city centre. It feels very well connected, only a 15 minute bike ride to the city centre, but also to the wider world. The boat we stayed on was the last in the line, right at the end of Borneo where a nearby canal leads to the inland waterway network of Europe. Barges drifted past supplying bulk goods to the heavy industries of the Netherlands and Germany. We could have set off on our SUP, down to the Rhine to Basel, or on to the Danube and out to the Black Sea.
The neighbourhood has such a great feel to it. You are constantly aware of the nearby expanses of water, and in the heat wave when I was there the local kids were jumping off the bridges and quaysides into the docks. You wouldn’t think there would be much room for greenery in such a dense development but there are plants everywhere. Tiny beds in front of the houses allow trailing plants to be grown over the facades and people have appropriated the pavements in front of their houses and houseboats with picnic tables, benches and plants. The islands are dead ends so there is no through traffic, and bikes outnumber cars, so the streets feel safe and quiet. The atmosphere on a summer evening is really special, with families dining outside and greeting neighbours. I could happily live here.
