KJ Den Haag
Entrance to the City
A city begins where you arrive. For a long time, The Hague began nowhere. From now on, anyone stepping off the train or RandstadRail at The Hague Central Station will walk into the city beneath a wavy 9,000 m² timber ceiling. Turning around reveals that this forms the entirely public ground-floor frontage of KJ, a residential building with over 390 homes in the heart of the city. With the completion of KJ Den Haag, arriving at The Hague Central no longer feels like the end of a journey, but rather a welcoming gateway to the city.
For years, this was one of the first places people saw when they arrived in The Hague, but it never really felt like part of the city. With KJ Den Haag, we had the chance to change that and create an arrival that finally does justice to The Hague.’
A gateway to The Hague
A gateway to The Hague
For decades, The Hague’s Koningin Julianaplein was a surprisingly underwhelming entrance to the political heart of the Netherlands. Wedged between railway tracks, the tram viaduct, traffic flows, and the heavy substructure of Stichthage, it was little more than leftover space defined by infrastructure. In 2016, Powerhouse Company, Synchroon, Amvest, and DELVA Landscape Architecture won the competition with an ambitious proposal to create a gateway that could, quite literally, do justice to The Hague. After more than a decade of design, development, and construction, KJ Den Haag is complete. Developed by Amvest and Synchroon and built by JP van Eesteren, the project brings 390 apartments, shops, restaurants, cafés, and shared amenities to the heart of the city.
The timber ceiling is the result of more than five years of close collaboration between dozens of specialists, and we’re incredibly proud to have realized something of this scale and complexity.’
Weaving rights in timber and gold
Weaving rights in timber and gold
At ground level, a new station entrance hall connects Koningin Julianaplein with The Hague Central Station. Here, a double-curved timber ceiling spanning approximately 9,000 m² unfolds. Its flowing geometry references the dune landscape of The Hague and frames views toward the greenery of the Koekamp as people arrive in the city.
Translating the complex, multi-curved timber ceiling into a buildable design required a project-specific design logic. The surface was mapped like a landscape using isolines to align thousands of individual planks. By hand, nearly 16,000 golden letters were mounted onto the wood to form the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the shape of a world map. It is both a symbolic and literal message for everyone entering The Hague, the international city of peace and justice.
From Classicism to Curvature
A valley with a view
A valley with a view
The design of KJ Den Haag’s two residential towers responds closely to the conditions of the site. The towers rise from an L-shaped base defined by the urban plan, while solar studies informed their stepped silhouette. Reaching 90 meters at their highest point, the volumes gradually step down to preserve sunlight across Koningin Julianaplein. This creates ‘the green valley’: a cascade of communal terraces. DELVA Landscape Architecture designed the planting across the terraces, using a rich variety of trees and plants to turn them into lush green spaces where residents can meet, relax, and enjoy panoramic views across the city.
As well as unifying a disjointed architectural landscape, our design creates an attractive and transparent entrance for The Hague.’
