The Bijlmer and today’s demands

In L’amour des villes, the French theorist Bruno Fortier describes a fascinating dilemma. Sometimes a city appears to be too precious to be adapted to changing circumstances and opinions, yet at the same time it represents a challenge and a a source of inspiration with which to ponder an urban life by definition subject to continual change.1)

It is impossible to philosophize about the future of the Bijlmermeer without sooner or later coming up against this dilemma. For even if the powers-that-be had decided not to tinker with the original, glorious concept this would in itself have been a denial of the magnificently conceived adventure that gave rise to it. This makes the process of regeneration in the Bijlmermeer more complex than in other, comparable cases. Indeed, there are no comparable cases in the Netherlands. Perhaps nowhere else either.
One thing is certain, the crux of the Bijlmer predicament lies in the radicalism of the original scheme. At a time when urbanistic thinking still followed the modernist line, a polder somewhere on the outskirts of Amsterdam was annexed and raised. The cluster of buildings that was subsequently realized in this clearly defined area was quite unlike anything else in the vicinity. Its silhouette, recognizable from far and wide, had but one message to proclaim: this is a place for living.

Because the district was from the very outset a place where there was not much else to do besides living, the monotonous high-rise became a trade mark, one whose connotations were largely negative. The Bijlmer became synonymous with a merciless public housing Moloch that, despite all its openness, was perceived as a closed and impenetrable enclave. The many green spaces and an incredibly rich flora and fauna notwithstanding it came to be associated with just one material: concrete.
As such, the distant silhouette readily became a bogey for the outside world. People heard and read about how dangerous it was there, about burglaries and hold-ups, and those who had never experienced the Bijlmer from the inside had no trouble imagining that this was indeed how it was. Many inhabitants had and still have different ideas: ‘I wonder whether the press, which is so keen to call the Bijlmer a ghetto, realizes that it has itself helped to create that ghetto image’, wrote the author August Willemsen in 1990.2)

Low-rise

While Willemsen’s words indicate the existence of an image problem, at the bricks and mortar level too the Bijlmer was always more than just high-rise. From the very beginning the plans for the Bijlmer (that one and only Bijlmer, topic of endless debate) included a number of low-rise areas (including Kelbergen and Kantershof, built in the 1970s to designs by J.J. Sterenberg. And since then, over ten years ago in fact, medium- and low-rise developments have been built in what is known as the ‘Little K-district’ (the area to the south of Gulden Kruis between Kraaiennest and Bijlmerpark, designed by Marge, Loerakker Rijnboutt Ruijssenaars and others). Together with the main Amsterdamse Poort shopping centre (built in 1985-87) these low-rise areas served to undermine the apparent unassailability of the Bijlmer concept and opened the way for a process of redevelopment.

An essential part of this process was the period of the second half of the 1980s when the prospects for redevelopment were studied by OMA and others. In the ensuing debate, considerable weight was given to the Bijlmerdreef, the main dreef or traffic-way and principal axis of the area known as the ‘Bijlmer Strip’. Consequently, by the time important strategic decisions came to be taken, the focus was firmly on an ‘avenue approach’ where the accent was on upgrading the backbone of the district (the access route and the zones immediately adjoining it). A more important if more abstract consequence, however, was the implication that the Bijlmer was indeed open to discussion at the level of its components. This signalled the beginning of a new trend, in that it formed the prelude to a modification of thinking about the Bijlmer and – in the same vein – to the splitting up of the district into a number of planning areas. It was this that gave rise to a situation in which the old Bijlmer concept – the grand gesture – found itself confronted with a whole range of less sweeping concepts.

We are now witnessing the advent of a wider variation of building types, green spaces and access strategies, fewer cars and perhaps an even a richer mix of inhabitants. The Bijlmer is becoming more and more ‘hospitable’ and the design is best described as tasteful. Take, for example, the already completed low-rise Gulden Kruis district designed by Lafour & Wijk and built around their previously designed church (‘The New City’).3) Take Nieuw Geinwijk, an area of single-family dwellings, designed by DKV, Hoenders Dekkers Zinsmeister and Ton Venhoeven, due to be built around a Jehova’s Witness ‘Kingdom Hall’ designed by Max Rijnders, or Nieuw Gerenstein, with dwellings by Geurst & Schulze and (once again) Hoenders Dekkers Zinsmeister.
The translation of Bijlmerdreef into a stately avenue with a tree-filled central reservation, a service road on either side and a four-storey street facade, is based on two monumental avenues (Rooseveltlaan and Apollolaan) in Berlage’s plan for Amsterdam Zuid and represents a veritable metamorphosis. A metamorphosis that justifies the fact that all the new buildings along the new avenue belong to a type specially developed for the Bijlmer: the ‘up-down’ dwelling consisting of two stacked single-family dwellings each with their own front door opening onto the street and either a garden or a large terrace (earlier examples of this type can be found in the Concertgebouw district of Amsterdam).

Taken as a whole, the new architecture is remarkably low-key, almost to the point of dullness. There is none of the fairground architecture we have seen so much of in recent years. This must have something to do with the clear, urbanist-led guidance and firm agreements as to the choice of materials (for example, brick along the raised traffic-ways). And also with a fortunate choice of architects, that is to say of designers (Lafour & Wijk, DKV, Geurst & Schulze) capable of handling both agreements and materials. All of which reconciles one to the occasional frivolous incident, such as Claus & Kaan’s three blocks of ‘pawn’ dwellings in Gulden Kruis: quasi-absurdist mini-castles with sun terraces on the south side and for the rest curving brickwork with minimal fenestration.

Relationships

Such an operation means that all relationships within the district are (necessarily) the subject of discussion. For example: what is the relationship between different types of buildings, high-rise and low-rise, and between the groups of people living in them. Do the latter mix or remain segregated? Among the urbanists, Donald Lambert (Kraaijvanger Urbis) has expressed an opinion about spatial relationships, to the effect that the low-rise should enhance the (remaining) high-rise and form a spatial transition between new and old. Among the architects only Ton Venhoeven appears to have given the subject any thought, specifically on two points: he endeavours to build houses that are flexible enough to accommodate other forms of cohabitation than the stereotypical nuclear family and that exhibit, through a certain abstraction in their facades, an affinity with the high-rise apartment buildings.
In the meantime the result of the first high-rise renovation project (Hoogord) is both spectacular and promising, mainly because of the way the plinth has been handled. In 1995 the inner street and the storage areas on the first two floors were converted by Verheijen/Verkoren/de Haan into 42 dwellings (including company and studio apartments) reached via spacious and lofty entrance halls. In the process the block has acquired a lively base and with it a charisma that can be seen and felt a considerable distance away. Once all the high-rise earmarked for retention has undergone similar treatment (there are plans by Verheijen/Verkoren/de Haan (again), Klous & Branjes, Drayer & Engelkes and Duinker Van der Torre for the H, F, G and K districts respectively) the living environment will have been changed almost beyond recognition.

Then there is the question of the relationship between the various sections of the Bijlmer. Or sections of sections, for instance the Ganzenhoef and Kraaiennest shopping centres. Ganzenhoef is to get a new local shopping precinct with a supermarket, an assortment of retail outlets ranged around a market square, offices on the side bordering the metro station (due for refurbishment) and such services as a chemist and a dentist. A separate building will house a neighbourhood centre complete with sports hall, music school and children’s farm. Of the three plans thrown up by a limited ideas competition for Ganzenhoef, the choice has fallen on Kees Christiaanse’s design for a volume that, while affirming the building line of the Bijlmerdreef, also exhibits a degree of plasticity. When the Gooioord and Groeneveen car parks opposite are eventually demolished and replaced by housing, offices, a religious centre and perhaps new parking arrangements, Ganzenhoef will have itself a rather grand new centre.

Current planning assumes that the area can support a similar or even slightly larger centre in Kraaiennest. But is this really so? In the past the little neighbourhood shopping centre on Karspeldreef has taken over the role of the Ganzenhoef centre as more and more people started to feel unsafe in the larger centre. But once Ganzenhoef has been upgraded a lot of people are bound to gravitate back to it.

There is one aspect of considerable importance for the mutual relationships between the various sections of the Bijlmer. It is the decision, taken a few years ago, to abandon the approach tackling one dreef at a time proposed by OMA and to opt instead for areas of activity spanning the traffic-ways. This made it possible for instance to design Nieuw Geinwijk and Nieuw Gerenstein on the one hand and Gulden Kruis (an area that spans the Bijlmerdreef) on the other, all at the same time.

In Kraaiennest two areas were tackled simultaneously, one north and the other south of Karspeldreef. The planners took the opportunity to commission three overlapping studies: one for the area south of that traffic-way (De Nijl), one for the traffic-way itself (Architekten Cie) and one for the area north of it, also known as Bijlmermuseum (West 8). Thanks to these overlaps, Karspeldreef has never for a moment been seen in isolation, either as a problem, or in the context of solutions. Nor will it have to function as a dividing line between the various sections of Kraaiennest in the future: the ‘Kraaiennest Strategy Plan’ that is based on the three studies offers several starting points for incorporating integration of the dreef into the plans; if followed they will lead to the development of a more intensive concentration of activities around Karspeldreef itself.

Coherence

This development provides an excellent basis for thinking in terms of link-ups and hence of coherence. Nor would one expect there to be any problem in achieving this coherence, given that all the preconditions for effective coordination – a powerful cluster of commissioning bodies (City of Amsterdam, Zuidoost District and the omnipresent Nieuw Amsterdam Housing Corporation) and a central coordinating body (Projectbureau Vernieuwing Bijlmermeer) with separate project groups for each area of activity – appear to have been met. Nevertheless, there are one or two imbalances in the planning.

For example, it is curious to note that the Bijlmerdreef to the east of Gooiseweg is to be lowered while the section to the west remains elevated, while in the latter area the desired continuity depends on no fewer than three different plans: new housing in Vogeltjeswei and redevelopment projects in F district and around Marktplein.
Compaan’s plan for Vogeltjeswei (bordering the elevated Bijlmerdreef), which exhibits a considerable affinity with Lafour &

Wijk’s Gulden Kruis (along the lowered section), looks convincing on paper. But whether it will contribute to a sense of spatial continuity remains to be seen. And we are still in the dark about what is going to happen around Marktplein and F district opposite.

In 1996 a ‘Strategy Plan for F district’ was drawn up but it amounts to no more than a list of starting﷓points (the urban design plan based on these points has yet to be designed). The strategy plan envisages the partial demolition of the high-rise with the specific exception of the three end blocks along the Bijlmerdreef which are ear-marked for redevelopment by Klous & Brandjes. The other remaining high-rise will be incorporated into ‘islands’ along with low-rise.

Max. 13’s study for F district also envisaged a number of short rows of housing at right angles to the dreef, yet there is another scheme in the pipeline for this zone. Last year the Marktplein/Fazantenhof was the subject of a limited competition. Mecanoo responded with a plan for a ‘bustling Bijlmer hub’. Their square is conceived as a classical agora around an omni-sided building below the Bijlmerdreef/Flierbosdreef intersection. On either side of the Bijlmerdreef they project a type of development that is new for the Bijlmer: a perimeter housing block entirely surrounded by water. Lafour & Wijk’s concept was completely different. In their vision the market square is at one end of a series of squares that begins at the other end of the diagonal boulevard in the new town centre.

One point that will undoubtedly weigh heavily in the evaluation of these alternatives is the fact that Mecanoo’s plan has a decidedly autonomous character whereas Lafour & Wijk’s design is above all an attempt to effect a reconciliation between Amsterdamse Poort, F district and Vogeltjeswei. They achieve this by allowing the Vogeltjeswei subdivision a distinctive development and then adapting Max. 13’s proposed housing rows to fit in with this.

If coherence is what is wanted, then the Lafour & Wijk plan is preferable for only it allows for the development of a very relaxed and natural continuity around the market square.4) A continuity that is vitally important because on the other side of Amsterdamse Poort and the railway line the new town centre is busy capturing all the attention for itself. The greatest challenge here of course is to find a way of linking the new (‘American’) centre, with its colossal public attractions (stadium, mega-cinema, theatres and pop-music hall which together account for 13 million visitors a year) to Amsterdamse Poort so as to produce a single centre. A single constellation of high-rise towers stretching from the end of the diagonal up to and including the market square and surrounds.

There has been a conscious decision in favour of variation and of separate plans for each section of the Bijlmer. The logical question now is who – for example with respect to the series of plans described above but also in more general terms – is supervising the fitting together of the various pieces of the puzzle? It is a question that becomes all the more interesting in the light of De Bijlmer is mijn stad (The Bijlmer is My City), a report by Ashok Bhalotra (Kuiper Compagnons).5) This integral plan (also referred to as a master plan), assumes that the Bijlmer is already a fully fledged city and that as such its districts can undergo their own individual urban renewal process. Bhalotra consequently presents ‘a development scenario against which completed and proposed plans can be tested and new ideas generated’.6) This does indeed include, among much else, a plea for coherence, but there is every reason to fear that the development of, say, the F, G and K districts is already so far advanced and so irresistible that the ‘master’ plan is destined to play second fiddle and eventually to be reduced to one of Bhalotra’s own sub-plans, namely to turn Bijlmer Park into Bijlmer Lake.

Context

In a wider context it has rightly been observed that the Bijlmer has changed from the ‘satellite of a core city’ to the ‘core of a network city’;7) and the question has been raised as to what effect the new spatial variation will ultimately have on the area’s image. This raises once again the question of the Bijlmer as a whole. Once again, if we are to make any sort of assessment of the position of the Bijlmer vis-à-vis Amsterdam and, following on from this, its regional and national position, it is necessary to take a brief look into the past.

Before 1987, the year when Amsterdamse Poort was opened, even people living close to the Bijlmer had little reason to enter the district, but a lot has changed since the main centre was completed. The sub-centres have gone from strength to strength. There is a wide range of shops and a market. There is a main-line station and several metro stations. This means that Amsterdam Zuidoost is already a place where people from the immediate vicinity go to do their shopping or to begin a trip to Amsterdam or Utrecht. Whereas the Bijlmer was once a satellite of Amsterdam, a district easily construed as introverted and enclosed and that one passed while entering or leaving Amsterdam, it is now becoming clear that it is a functionally integrated part of the region.

The speed of change can be seen in the fact that in 1987 Jaap van Rijs (then still working at MBO) could still argue that the City of Amsterdam should recognize the Zuidoost town centre as a second centre of Amsterdam.8) Ten years on it is clear that the Amsterdam region is in the process of acquiring more than two centres and that the Zuidoost centre’s role is more pivotal than previously imagined.

For many people the comprehensive nature of the changes envisaged for the arc running from Leiden, via Haarlemmermeer, Schiphol and the southern edge of Amsterdam to Utrecht, suddenly became clear during the presentation of the ARCAM MAP in December 1995.9) Now the Province of North Holland has confirmed that impression with the publication of another map, Changing North Holland 1995-2005.10) One glance at this map reveals a development that is close to being a curved belt city with four highlights/centres, namely Hoofddorp, Schiphol, Amsterdam Zuid and Amsterdam Zuidoost. A front line behind which the other sections of the Amsterdam agglomeration take cover as it were. The title of a municipal policy document on future developments, Van wijk naar voorstad (From neighbourhood to suburb, Amsterdam Zuidoost, 1988), displays prescience.
For the Bijlmer is part of Amsterdam’s Zuidas (southern axis), an elongated prime location that stretches from Schiphol to Centrumgebied Amsterdam Zuidoost and that is destined to become even more commercially attractive once the rail link between Utrecht and Schiphol has been built. It is located along the Amsterdam-Utrecht railway line which will see its capacity doubled in the near future, partly for the benefit of the high speed trains from Germany. During the coming years the main-line Bijlmer station will be enlarged while regional contacts will be significantly boosted by the Sloterdijk-Gein loop due to be opened this year. Other developments in the pipeline include the closure of the Sloterdijk-IJburg-Zuidoost loop, the construction of the Zuidtangent (a bus/rail link between Weesp and the port of IJmuiden via Bijlmerdreef and Schiphol), and the widening of the A1 and the A9.
Thanks to its location and the aforementioned infrastructural developments, the Bijlmer inevitably affects Randstad policies. It is scarcely surprising therefore that the Bijlmer is seen nationally as a spearhead of the national Grote Stedenbeleid (Big City Policy)11) and that (because of a grant from the European Union’s URBAN fund) it is set to become known abroad. After all, acceptance of the European Union funds obliges the recipient to share the knowledge acquired in the course of the urban renewal process. Which of course raises the question of whether those who are currently responsible for the redevelopment of the Bijlmer are aware of this and are taking it into account. What are they aiming for? What kind of impact do they have in mind?
As far as the new city centre is concerned this seems pretty clear. After the European football championships in 2000, the final of which will be played in the Arena stadium, the whole world will know that Amsterdam Zuidoost city centre exists and where it is. But can one have a city centre without a city? And again: who is looking after the proper correlation between the grand new centre and the increasingly heterogeneous residential area behind and around it? In the wider context?

Maturity

What it in fact comes down to is no more and no less than a process of growing up. In the case of the Bijlmer a logical and necessary process that is viewed by many with a certain amount of suspicion, which is understandable. The original scheme was so fine, so lucid, so complete, so uncompromising12) that every intervention is bound to tarnish it somewhat. Compromises are indeed being made now and whereas there is considerable excitement about the new centre, living there is getting less exciting. But is this such a bad thing?

Even after the major ‘problem flats’ have been demolished the Bijlmer will still have a distinctive silhouette. The ‘Bijlmer frame’ referred to by Max. 13 in connection with the Frissenstein, Fleerde and Florijn end blocks, will still be recognizable, while the offices in Centrumgebied Amsterdam Zuidoost and around the Arena stadium, together with the Arena itself, even contribute an added dimension to the whole. You could say that the image is becoming more powerful but less mysterious. Yet the modified radicalism coupled with a more prosaic but more flamboyant strength will for the first time give the Bijlmer something of the aura of a real city. A few years ago Bijlmer resident Bernadette de Wit declared: ‘The Bijlmermeer is a third world city’.13) Now it is busy becoming on the one hand friendlier, on the other hand harder and more massive, in short: more ordinary and more complex. It is growing up by energetically adapting to criteria that until now it didn’t seem to give a fig about.

Viewed in this light, it is good that in the Bijlmermuseum area (G district and Kraaiennest where the concept has worked best) there is a deliberate attempt to find solutions for existing problems within the original Bijlmer principles. It is a healthy form of conservatism that can prove enriching, provided it is combined with other approaches. In an interview, Claus & Kaan with some justicification called for more evidence of middle class taste and for the stately, old-fashioned, chic character of Amsterdam Zuid.14) And of course a city is only really mature when it can offer both of these.

This means that the regeneration process can only be very complex and that there should be no attempt to simplify it. At the same time every effort should be made to employ simple strategies. In this respect the approach taken in Kraaiennest is exemplary. The ‘Kraaiennest Strategy Plan’ gives top priority to a series of measures aimed at improving public security, varying from the elimination of spots perceived as unsafe, to the strengthening of social control and the reduction of the number of paths, bridges and underpasses.

Among the simple but so often neglected strategies is the integrated approach that was implemented in the Bijlmer in 1995 and that is intended to ensure that renewal is carried out coherently throughout the different areas. In this context it is only logical that local residents should be involved in the planned changes at an early stage and also interesting that the district authorities should have invited a number of architects with a non-Western background (Mike Janga, Roger Alwart, Timmie Thio and Guree & Neelu Boparal) to investigate the housing needs of immigrants and to integrate them into a housing plan.

Emotion

It is essential at all times to create for the spatial changes a socio-economic basis and then make the best possible use of it. This is necessary because in social terms the Bijlmer is still not profiting much from the renewal process. It is revealing to note that the annual figures of the Central Statistical Office show that while employment opportunities have risen sharply in the Amsterdam periphery – in common with other large cities – and even more so in Haarlemmermeer and Amstelveen, most of the people who are benefiting from this development live outside the area.15) In Amsterdam Zuidoost it is still necessary to shape the kind of work that will benefit local residents. Which is why it is important that cheap business premises for starters are being built on the Daalwijkdreef; in time the most successful of these will be able to move into the Ganzenhoef centre. And why the accent on creating small-scale employment opportunities in the ‘Kraaiennest Strategy Plan’ is vital and the news that the new Academy for Musical Theatre is keen to locate in Amsterdam Zuidoost encouraging.

‘The city is a map of society’, says Donald Olsen.16) And for those who believe that, the Bijlmer is a history book crammed with an incredible amount of evidence as to what it was that inspired architects, urban planners and everyone else concerned in its creation. It is a highly emotional little book. In 1973, seven years after the first stone was laid, a widely distributed newspaper bid Amsterdammers ‘Welcome to Bijlmermeer’, a remote but awe-inspiring place, witness the large aerial photograph on the front page showing the D/F district islanded in a tremendous sea of space and in the foreground a virginal Bijlmerpark.17) Ten years ago (1987) there were huge problems but council officials who came to announce that all manner of things were going to change, were jeered off the stage by residents. And now the severity of the changes taking place is being dramatized in print and on the airwaves.
‘At Ganzenhoef,’ wrote one newspaper, ‘the vibrations of the pneumatic drills are shattering the paving of the Bijlmerdreef’.18) And Zef Hemel, Bijlmer resident and urbanist, declared: ‘The Bijlmer is the most beautiful thing built in the Netherlands in recent times. Why doesn’t anyone have the gumption to say they think it’s beautiful?’19) Nevertheless, partial demolition is a good thing, if only because it is emotionally equivalent to the radicalism of the beginning. At present, though, it looks as if a wild beast is in the process of being tamed in the Bijlmer.20) We need have no fear that this will mean the disappearance of the district, any more than that the Bijlmer will one day become just another Amsterdam district as asserted by its district chairman Ronald Janssen.21) The latter can and will never happen. There will always be a place for colossal and majestic things, and our reaction to such will always have its full measure of hate and love. The Bijlmermeer is destined to loom ever larger on the spatial planning horizon in this country.

*This article could only be written after interviews with, among others, Bart Bux of the Zuidoost district and project managers Cor Brandsma, Niko Koers, Robert Leferink and Igor Roovers.

3. Maarten Kloos, ‘A building like a hollow in the dunes’, Archis no. 7, 1994, pp. 76-80/

4. At the time this article went to press it was still not known which of the two plans would be chosen.

9. Map drawn up by ARCAM showing all government plans for housing, work, infrastructure, green spaces and nature reserves until the year 2015. A digital version of the map is now available on the Internet. Website: http//www.transparant.net/amsterdam

19. News broadcast, 31 December 1996.

20. With thanks to Juliette van der Meijden.