Canal House HG

Contemporary Meets Classic

We created the perfect home for our clients – and their fine collection of Modernist furniture – by transforming an old canal house apartment on Amsterdam’s stately Herengracht. Sweeping away a cluttered layout, we restored the space’s original beauty, while tailoring it to its new owners.

BudgetConfidential
Time span2010 - 2011
Size120 m²
StatusCompleted
LocationAmsterdam, NL
TypeInteriors, Living
Client
Confidential
Partner in charge
Nanne de Ru

Tall, skinny and wonderfully atmospheric, the Dutch canal house makes great flexible housing.

Stijn Kemper

A window on elegance

A window on elegance

We were asked to redesign an apartment for a professional couple and their wonderful art and design collection, located on one of Amsterdam’s most beautiful canals. Our design does away with the existing layout, which did nothing for the space, simplifying the apartment to create two distinct areas: one for living, and one for sleeping. We opened up a large and beautiful window by removing a floor and wall partitions, flooding the apartment with light and opening up the space to atmospheric courtyard views. By playing with varying ceiling heights in the entry hall and split-level ground floor, we created a serious sense of spatial playfulness.

Hitting the heights

We played with levels
Paradise for bookworms
The sculptural staircase
01 - 03

We transformed the whole apartment with simple yet elegant solutions.

Sculptural (love) objects

Sculptural (love) objects

Iconic furniture from the 1950s and 60s by Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobson, Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen now populates the 19th-century apartment. Harmonizing with the presence of these desirable items, we added a number of sculptural ‘objects’ ourselves, including the spiral staircase that leads to the bedroom upstairs, the monolith-like marble bathroom wall and the library wall with stairs. With these and other pieces, we elaborate on the theme of objects in space.

A lot of existing buildings no longer fill the functions people want, so the most obvious action for us is to transform them.

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Sculpting Space