After 20 years of politics, engineering, designing and building, the new Amsterdam metro link from the north to the south will open mid 2018.
Almost there
Benthem Crouwel Architects has designed seven metro stations: two stations above ground and five stations underground, along a route that is almost ten kilometers long.
The stations are almost finished; the trains are test driving at this moment and in a year’s time Amsterdam residents, commuters, tourists, day trippers, and metro admirers are able to travel from the north to the south in just 15 minutes.
Soggy soil
The task of engineering an underground metro 25 meters deep in the soggy soil of historic Amsterdam, built on long wooden stilts around 1300, was not an easy one.
Thanks to a new engineering technique of tunnelling shields that was developed in the late nineties, it became possible to create tunnels – at certain levels even 30 meters deep – in Amsterdam’s wet and unstable ground, without affecting the city too much.
Intuitive routing
Each station is unique. Its architecture is determined by the different locations and by the space allowed by the Amsterdam city plan. At the same time, all stations are related to each other, and share a main architectural concept: the shortest possible connection between the underground platform and street level, and a logistics routing that flows in one continuous movement.
Travelers are able to find their way intuitively. The use of daylight as a guiding principle and avoiding an underground labyrinth of passages, spoke to the selection committee in 1995.
What followed was the assignment to Benthem Crouwel Architects of creating seven new metro stations: Noord, Noorderpark, Amsterdam Central Station, Rokin, Vijzelgracht, de Pijp, and Europaplein.
Undergound art route
A unique artwork that identifies with the location and offers orientation to the travelers, was commissioned for each individual station. The pieces connect the subterranean with the world above ground, creating an underground art route by (inter)national artists, accessible to everyone.
Additionally, station Rokin will exhibit a selection of the 700.000 archaeological objects that were excavated during the construction. The opening date is the 22nd of July, 2018. Source by Benthem Crouwel Architects.
- Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Architect: Benthem Crouwel Architects
- Client: City of Amsterdam
- Gross Floor Area: Ca. 10.000 m² per station
- Start Design: 1996
- Completion: 2018
- Photographs: Jannes Linders, Gé Dubbelman, Nina Albada, Courtesy of Benthem Crouwel Architects
