Let’s start the year off with a treat: in the Funenpark, one of the cherries on the architectural cake that is Amsterdam Oost. It is not really a park, but a living complex of the most innovative and aspirational this city has ever built.
It began as a slab of derelict land next to a railway station and tracks of the Eastern Docklands. It had polluted soil, an unfriendly setting next to screeching trains, and low aspirations. When the city put out a call to reinvent it as a living space, the firm LANDLAB came up with a genius concept: the entire park would be a shared space of green living for everyone within.
More than 550 people live in Funenpark today, cohabitating with different income levels, renters and buyers, and typologies of homes. And yet, walking inside and through it, it feels as though you are in a huge park where people happen to live. The design is exciting from below, as from above. You realize the shape is of a large triangle, like a big slice of cake. It is by design: within that slice are 16 individual villas, meant to look like petit-fours desserts. Small, hearty, delicious – livable, compact, strong. The outside triangle is made up of multi-level apartment blocks of all colors and forms. Skin windows and glass facades reflecting natural colors make the space feel outdoorsy, like you’ve not just entered a living complex, but a whole new lifestyle.
The pathway around the slice of cake and petit fours is crafted with enormous tiles, trees, and immense greenery. The tile forms continue all along, to never break the path or create diversity within this urban village. It is one continuous courtyard that becomes a home, that goes into a field, that arrives at a playground, and walks along private homes, art sculptures, doors and windows open and the sound of children playing.
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