Amsterdam Red Light District Pilot Projects 01: Vision St.Annen Kwartier
Client: Stimuleringfonds voor Architectuur, Rotterdam
Collaboration: Boundary Unlimited with Changfang Luo
Status: Ongoing
The St. Annen Kwartier, located in the south of the Oudekerksplein, Amsterdam is under urban transformation. The area has been famous for its concentration of prositution windows and the long alleys, where the customers can make contact with the prostitutes while walking through them.
Below is the program map done by us, the red area are all prostitution windows at this moment.
There are several major property owners in this area who own most of the windows and are resistent to government’s gentrification act. A lot of buildings are not in used in the upper floors, due to the fact that the owners want to maximize the numbers of windows on the ground floor, therefore leavign the upper floors empty. If the government would start to buy all properties from these owners, it will cost them a lot of millions and at least 5-10 years of hard negotiation.
Below is the birdview of the entire building morphology of the St.Annen Kwartier. It is built by us by 3D software with building drawings from the Amsterdam Panden Archief. (The Oudekerk is located on the top of the image).
We propose a renovation plan for the St. Annen Kwartier by strategically changing the upper floors of chosen properties. Below is the first scenario that is based on buying 5 properties from the private owners and link them by 2 sky bridges. The upper floors can be activated and transformed into restaurant, disco, or event spaces, allowing the public to enter the St.Annen Kwartier from the Oudekerksplein or the St.Annestraat to the roof of these properties. For the rest of the upper floors of other private properties, we suggest to slowly change them into offices, which can serve as noise buffer for the rest of the buildings.
With this renovation plan, new functions can emerge on the upper floors of the St.Annen Kwartier without conflicting with the current prostitution programs. They can even bring each other some extra commercial value. The future transformation of the rest of the prostitution windows can happen gradually, once the agreements are reached between the property owners and the government.
So when you are going to Trompetterssteeg in the coming years,below is what you will see (With people going to restaurant or exhibition crossing on top of you..)
The second scenario is to buy properties along the Dolle Bewijnensteeg and the Trompetterssteeg , from mainly 2 major property owner groups (Frank and Bert Pot, Hans and Michiel) . By only convincing the 2 major owner groups, a large space on the upper floor can emerge by connecting these properties. With our building investigation into these buildings, we examine that all floors can be leveled to the same without big construction difficulties. With this renovation plan, a large scale public event space can be created, on the upper floors of the properties along the prositution alleys.
For other private properties along the alleys, we propose to transform them into offices, to serve as noise buffer for the rest of the houses. With the interesting relationship with the large scale event space on the other side of the ally, the offices can have extra sptial and promotional quality (See below for the interior impression of the future offices) .
Our vision for the St.Annen Kwartier suggest the government a strategic start by looking into the potential of the existing building morphology and to accept the mix of different functions during the urban renewal process. It is a more economically sustainable method than to gentrify all prostitution windows at once and to expect new investors to occupy the empty properties in a short period of time.
