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The new Inntel hotel in Zaandam is without a shadow of a doubt already the main eye-catching crowd stopper in the revamped town center and a building that has set many tongues wagging in the Netherlands.
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Iconic Dutch Fusion Architecture is featured in Zaandam's new Intell hotel. Photography: Roel Backaert © design: Molenaar & Van Winden architecten/ WAM architecten.
The iconic green wooden houses of the Zaan region were the fount of inspiration for the hotel's design. The structure is a lively stacking of various examples of these traditional houses, ranging from a notary's residence to a worker's cottage.
Wilfried van Winden envisages the hotel as a temporary home, alluding to that transience with the stack of houses. Visually speaking the structure is built up from a varied stacking of almost seventy individual little houses, executed in four shades of the traditional green of the Zaan region. The hotel is unique, familiar yet original and idiosyncratic. It is a design that could be realised only in Zaandam but at the same time transcends and reinvigorates local tradition. It was, moreover, specifically tailored to this site. 'The Blue House', inspired by the work Claude Monet painted at Zaandam in 1871, is the ultimate attention-grabber.
A stack of traditional Zaandam houses
The overall result is striking, the building exemplary for the Fusion Architecture that Wilfried van Winden champions. Fusion represents an inventive way of linking present and past, tradition and innovation, high culture and low. This generates a novel expressiveness that corresponds to specifi c local practices but is at the same time universal. 'But architecture naturally makes a direct appeal to the emotions as well,' notes Van Winden. 'An acquaintance recently commented, "When I drive into Zaandam and see the building standing there a smile inevitably spreads across my face." You could hardly ask for a more wonderful compliment.'
A new urban plan with an elegant new hotel
The town centre and station area of Zaandam, hub of the Zaanstad municipality in the province of North Holland, are currently being radically restructured. The 'Inverdan' urban redevelopment scheme was devised by Soeters Van Eldonk architecten, a plan that reinstates the historical street layout, reopens a canal an
Wilfried van Winden envisages the hotel as a temporary home, alluding to that transience with the stack of houses. Visually speaking the structure is built up from a varied stacking of almost seventy individual little houses, executed in four shades of the traditional green of the Zaan region. The hotel is unique, familiar yet original and idiosyncratic. It is a design that could be realised only in Zaandam but at the same time transcends and reinvigorates local tradition. It was, moreover, specifically tailored to this site. 'The Blue House', inspired by the work Claude Monet painted at Zaandam in 1871, is the ultimate attention-grabber.
A stack of traditional Zaandam houses
The overall result is striking, the building exemplary for the Fusion Architecture that Wilfried van Winden champions. Fusion represents an inventive way of linking present and past, tradition and innovation, high culture and low. This generates a novel expressiveness that corresponds to specifi c local practices but is at the same time universal. 'But architecture naturally makes a direct appeal to the emotions as well,' notes Van Winden. 'An acquaintance recently commented, "When I drive into Zaandam and see the building standing there a smile inevitably spreads across my face." You could hardly ask for a more wonderful compliment.'
A new urban plan with an elegant new hotel
The town centre and station area of Zaandam, hub of the Zaanstad municipality in the province of North Holland, are currently being radically restructured. The 'Inverdan' urban redevelopment scheme was devised by Soeters Van Eldonk architecten, a plan that reinstates the historical street layout, reopens a canal an
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