Located in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam, Blue House is a 275 m2 housing program designed by BETA Office. Completed in 2017, this house’s design is about celebrating individuality and reflecting the clients’ colorful personalities.
Site
This house is enveloped in Yves Klein Blue and it also celebrates Build-It-Yourself architecture. The brownfield redevelopment of Buiksloterham, the site where the house sits, is started by Build-it-Yourself (BIY) plots.
The urban development form in Buiksloterham leads to experimentation in the house typology while personal preferences are used for the facades that resulting eclectic streetscapes.
This house is paying homage to the site’s condition and a critic as well at the same time.
Structure
Sits on top of an office, this house is tailored to the combination of a family and entrepreneurial life. A strong visual connection to the outdoors can be created by a sculptural main living space that is raised above passing traffic.
In opposite facades, the large openings balance natural light while the space is designed by the staircase and the kitchen. All surfaces are artificial apart from the haptic steel railings.
Details
This house also doesn’t have a lot of formal characteristics of a house. The spatial and material characteristics of this house resemble a public building, not a domestic interior. The facades are adorned with figurative compositions and enveloped in Yves Klein Blue.
This house is also ambiguous because it doesn’t stand out between its soft-toned neighbors and it also doesn’t vanish against the blue sky.
The contextual organization and the raumplan-like strategy of space are themes that appear in 3 Generation House.
Blue House Gallery
Photography: Marcel van der Burg, Ossip van Duivenbode (aerial photo)