Now here is a very crazy very Freo place that Ben Alpers and Andrew Hayim would love! It was a treat to visit this place in Amsterdam this week.
De Ceuvel is a planned workplace for creative and social enterprises adjacent to the van Hasselt canal off the river IJ in Amsterdam North. The land was secured for a 10-year lease from the Municipality of Amsterdam after a group of initiators won a tender to turn the site into a regenerative urban oasis. The former industrial plot has been turned into a unique urban eco-development. The site, which is heavily polluted due its former industrial as a boat building and repair yard, features imaginatively retrofitted houseboats placed around a winding timber walkway and surrounded by an undulating landscape of plants able to thrive in the polluted soil. The site was largely clearly of its former facilities so that the houseboats could be brought in and arranged for the new working environment. The soil was so polluted that it was covered with geotextile fabric and then approx 600mm of good quality soil was added on top. The walkways provided additional clearance from potential contact with the polluted soil. Raised beds filled with imported good growing media and soil are used for edible gardens. Each of the upgraded boats house offices, ateliers, and workshops for creative and social enterprises. The site includes a public restaurant, Ceuvel Café, and a bed & breakfast.
One travels to De Ceuvel after arriving at the Amsterdam Central train station by stepping directly outside of the station onto the wharf of the adjacent River Ij and taking the free ferry across the water to the other side. The ferries are going back and forth every few minutes transporting hundreds of pedestrians, cyclists and scooters. There is a ramp at the front of ferry that goes down to dock at wharf and the commuters stream off on the feet or bikes before the next batch storm on board for the trip across. These are vast waterways with massive barges, ferries and tourist boats moving enormous amounts of goods and people around Amsterdam and beyond up rivers like the Rhine and out to the North Sea via a series of lochs. Here in Amsterdam one is actually 8-metres below sea-level. This has been the case for more than 100 years. One could easily imagine this style of water side commuting between Fremantle and North Fremantle on the Swan River in Western Australia.
Once on the other side it is only a 10-15 minute walk to De Ceuval in the nearby industrial canals urban renewal area.
The tour of De Ceuvel was given to a group of postgraduate urban planning students and their staff from Berlin Technical University as well as myself, by Berith Danse. Berith was one of the original founders and runs a communications company and arts theatre cooperative out of De Ceuvel in two of the houseboat offices/studios.
The De Ceuvel site is intended to serve as a blueprint for urban renewal and redevelopment of former industrial sites, brownfields. Decentralized technologies and full recycling of local resources are sought to empower urban areas to be self-sufficient. Metabolic, an action agency for societal transformation, designed the technical and environmental system for the De Ceuvel site called the Cleantech Playground. The Cleantech Playground is both a decentralized cleantech utility and a demonstration and testing site for new technologies that can transform how people produce and consume resources and public services in cities. Throughout the site, solar technologies convert energy from the sun into heat and electricity. Green roofs and water collection systems are designed to collect, purify, and store rainwater for when it’s needed. Sanitation systems extract energy, nutrients, and water from the waste produced for on-site food production. Each houseboat office is fitted with a waterless, composting toilet. A network of sensors provide information on performance and user behavior. The Cleantech Playground includes the following core approaches:
Self-sufficiency: Currently, urban areas import energy and material and export waste. The Cleantech Playground applies the model of ecosystems to human neighborhoods, where a much more distributed model of producing and recycling energy, water, and food make urban neighborhoods more resilient and empowered.
A mix of high-tech and low-tech: The Cleantech Playground uses of high-tech systems like sensors, monitoring devices, solar panels, and high-efficiency electric boilers. Low-tech systems also play an important role, including biological waste processing, water filtration, smart insulation methods, vegetation, and solar tubes that provide more natural light to indoor spaces.
Showcase and Demonstration Ground: The broader public has limited understanding of clean technologies and environmental systems. The Cleantech Playground at De Ceuvel gives visitors a chance to understand how these systems work, how the technologies on the site are interconnected, and how to go about purchasing or building them for other developments.
Experimentation and Testing: De Ceuvel is a site for benchmarking existing technologies and researching new ones. An extensive network of sensors will gather data on energy and material flows, user behavior, and technological performance. Research institutes can partner with the Cleantech Playground to investigate.
(The Cleantech Playground at De Ceuvel is done by Metabolic)
The Ceuvel is part of the Cleantech Playground of Metabolic Lab . The workshops on the Ceuvel in this plan self-sufficient and be used as a testing ground to examine a wide range of clean technologies.
The artists’ studios converted boats are self-sufficient through the good insulation, sustainable heating system and the use of solar water heaters. The offices are equipped with rainwater collection and no-flush toilets. Sensors measure temperature, water quality and water demand. Further experimented with decentralized wastewater treatment with biogas production and material recovery (D-SARR system). Clean technologies such as urban agriculture, decentralized renewable energy, natural water purification and other components for a healthy urban metabolism are combined in this way.
The De Ceuval project was inspired by the Gewoonboot.
The NDSM-shipyard in Amsterdam North since the collapse of the Dutch Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in 1984, has been empty for years.
In 1998, cleared a dozen warehouses and warehouses in Amsterdam or threatened with eviction. Some 1,000 artists, designers, theater and other creative entrepreneurs came to sit without work, including Eva de Klerk.
In 2000 Eva de Klerk won a competition for the Northern District of temporary filling for the eastern part of the NDSM site (84,000 sq.m). She sought the right people around her, wrote the development concept, did a feasibility study, provided the necessary funding and additional funding, and was responsible for the entire process: from the design to the planning application. Under the name North Kinetisch she moved with a group of theater, skateboarders and sustainable entrepreneurs into the giant shipbuilding hall. Kinetic North Foundation was initially “only” a working group, but became the foundation administrator and promoter of special projects, such as City of Art, Skatepark Amsterdam and restaurant Noorderlicht.
In just a few years the NDSM became one of the cultural hotspots of Amsterdam and still is. Meanwhile NDSM has become the largest breeding ground in Europe. The still-evolving art city with creative entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial creativen, the skate park which now belongs to the European summit, new neighbors such as MTV, the many festivals that are organized, such as Over ‘t IJ Festival and Valtifest, not to mention the Pllek restaurants and Northern Lights, making the once abandoned NDSM attractive for young and old.
The geWoonboot meet its own energy, heat and cold, and water purification.
Visiting address: NDSM Square 104, 1,033th WB Amsterdam
Now the De Ceuval project has inspired the Schoonship project. This will be 8,000 new sustainable dwellings in a floating housing eco-development on the same canal nearby.
CLEAN SHIP AMSTERDAM http://www.schoonschipamsterdam.org/
Sustainable Floating House in Amsterdam
NEWSTHE GROUPFORMATION AND RESEARCHGOALSMEDIAPARTNERSCONTACTCLEAN SHIP
gb with brand
FORMATION AND RESEARCH
In 2008, Marjan de Blok made a television program about the autarkic geWoonboot a houseboat which itself generates energy and purifies water. She interviewed Pauline Westendorp, who was the administrator of the ordinary boat and a resident of the houseboats group IJsbaanpad In Amsterdam – South.
I was so inspired by this type of housing that I started thinking about how I could make this way of life for me. I discovered that this was what I wanted: The combination of sustainable or even entirely self-sufficient life on the water. I realized at once that much work would be to build a completely autarkic houseboat and wondered if this was useful: for indeed a better environment begins at home, but how durable you are on your own? Something in me said it was still too high and I almost wanted to abandon the plan.
Yet I kept following my filming on the boat just contact Pauline Westendorp.
She told me more about living on the water, sustainability in water and on the policy houseboats in Amsterdam. It was during this conversation that the idea emerged to develop a plan with a collective, are all sustainable in the water. It would be a citizen initiative where the community would agree with. When I wegfietste Pauline I was completely filled with my new mission, just … how would I find a group to join in this adventure.
That same evening I had won the first soul, Thomas Sykora, a good friend, my co – initiator. We decided that if we wanted to build a whole neighborhood, we had to begin to put the plan on an A4 page. We did that and now closed just about everyone we talked about our plan joined us. Pauline provided us with advice in this start-up phase. Through her we came in contact with the ‘Housing Experiments Steering Group’ and we were eligible for a grant. This amount we used to by the Régie we plan on letting out paper work. We founded Foundation Clean Ship and decided to apply for funding to the Province – North Holland. The discharge when we got the message that we were promised the money, I will never forget. That same evening we got together and we drank our first bottle of champagne. While we were busy for about one and a half years, this for us was the official beginning of the realization of Clean Ship. The board then consisted of Thomas, Sjoerd, Marnix, Daphne, Marjoram and Marjan. It was often looking for the right way to work, everyone had his full – time job and we had among all companies continue to run by the foundation. We ran into the fact that citizens living in gebeid is encouraged by the church, but that regulations only little late. Marcel Kastein the Director said in the beginning to me: “Please note that this kind of project will take at least seven years to get off the ground.” I thought, ‘OK, I’m going out of nine. ” The strange thing was not afschrok me, I was just thinking: what is beautiful: a sustainable project, there you must take your time.
The years that followed were interesting and occasionally spicy. It was sometimes difficult to work together sometimes, to get everyone on the same. Six people who try in the evening hours on a voluntary basis to achieve their dream, and they all have their ideas about how something should see to organize a good look. But we were always out, keeping in mind our dream.
Now the Clean Ship board consists of Thomas, Marjoram, William and myself. The group of residents is as good as known. Occasionally there is somebody off, because a house is bought, the family expansion no longer allows to wait relationship breaks or other personal circumstances. But we get almost daily notifications of geintereseerden. The desire to make the transition to a more sustainable life, there is! Both socially and ecologically! ”
Research
With the contribution of the Housing Experiments Steering Group was set in 2008 Clean Ship in its first steps. In collaboration with The Régie is examined Houthavens was a suitable location. That location did not work out.
In 2010, all arrows at Buiksloterham, the ideal location to pioneer and dreams come true.
In 2011, a feasibility study has been launched at this location, made possible through a financial contribution from the Province of Noord Holland. The study was conducted by space and matter and Waterloft.nl.
Phase 1 of this study was to develop generic plans in a feasible plan that meets the needs and goals of the group. During this phase, the participants committed themselves by signing a manifesto, filling out a detailed questionnaire and pay a financial deposit.
In Phase 2, the plans from Phase 1 concrete and adapted to the Johan van Hasselt Canal and the tender requirements.
Metabolic has a separate feasibility study conducted in the area of sustainability: a total solution for both Clean Ship and the neighboring isle Hatchery The Ceuvel .
For both studies, the main requirements that the plans would provide for a sustainable area groundbreaking project that would be affordable for the group entirely feasible one. These conditions have been met.
See my presentation here: DeCeuval060515MA
See also:
martinanda 