The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has revealed more details about the 7.5ha, 135,000 sq m Bijlmerbajes mixed-use development now going up on the site of a former prison complex in Amsterdam.
Bijlmerbajes was a six-tower prison between 1978 and 2016, designed to give inmates some freedom to encourage rehabilitation.
The Dutch government then sold it for redevelopment to AM Real Estate. Work on the new quarter began in 2017.
OMA’s design will keep several elements of the prison, including the administrative building, a tower, and the prison walls, but new access points will integrate the former closed complex into the surrounding areas.
The Kalverstraat, previously a communal area for prisoners, will become a central walking and cycling path connecting the development’s four independent clusters.
The remaining prison tower will house a vertical public park with a viewing platform. OMA says it will showcase Dutch urban farming concepts.
Four new residential buildings will have 1,350 apartments in all, 30% of them rented social housing. In contrast to the old concrete prison towers, the new buildings will vary in volume and materiality, and have porous façades.
Echoes of incarceration
OMA has elaborated on two of the new residential buildings, the Jay and the Martin.
The Jay will go up on a vacant plot originally intended for a seventh prison tower that was never built. It will have 17 floors and 135 apartments.
Parts of its design will echo the never-built tower, including its white, prefabricated concrete panels and square window grid. Windows protrude from the façade, sized to match the bars that would have been in them.
The Martin departs from the penitentiary past, comprising four interlocking cubes, stacked to create terraces and balconies and arranged around a central core and two, five-story atria.
Apartments range from 50 sq m to four-room units of 140 sq m. The 6th and 9th floors will have rooftop terraces.
Clink to clinker
The completed Bijlmerbajes project will use 98% of materials from the demolished towers, including concrete, prison bars and cell doors.
Green features, such as underground heat and cold storage installation, solar panelling and organic waste disposal, will be built.
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The post Prison break: How OMA is jazzing up a jail in Amsterdam appeared first on Global Construction Review.