Republica

It includes a lively mix of functions: apartments built to rent and to buy between 60 and 130 m², including a tower with ten Superlofts, commercial and office spaces, a gym, two café-restaurants and a mid- to long-stay apartment-hotel. The result is a functionally hybrid, spatially densified yet light, spacious and human-centred public realm.

Large windows, high ceilings, large floor spans and robust materials reference the industrial language of the Amsterdam harbours, while the natural stone plaza and grand stairs have a cheerful, almost Southern European quality.

The restaurant building has a monumental brick facade and slightly recedes from the building line. The resulting space, facing south, is furnished with wide seating steps: the ‘Spanish steps’ of Buiksloterham.

All technical rooms, parking spaces, bicycles, installations, storage, waste separation and hotel logistics are concealed in the semi-underground garage, with charging points for electric shared cars and a large bicycle parking.

This keeps the facades facing the raised ground level and the surrounding streets open on all sides, increasing liveliness, social safety and livability. Seats are integrated into planters for rainwater retention.

As part of circular Buiksloterham, Republica is a testlab for sustainable construction and living, selected by the City of Amsterdam and subsidised by the EU. The solar panels and a geothermal well generate more power than is needed.

An energy cooperative generates, stores and exchanges sustainable solar energy between residents using a micro-grid network and a ‘neighbourhood battery’. Greywater reuse, heat recovery from air and sewage water and waste separation close the loops.

Each building has its own story, structure, function, form and sustainable facade finish, and can therefore be adapted independently in function, layout and expression. They ‘grow’ with the times and thus last longer, likely resulting in significantly less demolition and construction waste in the future.

Most buildings are flexibly divisible thanks to the separation of support and fit-out, large spans, high ceilings, large windows and demountable material systems, inspired by the Open Building movement founded by John Habraken in the 1960s.