This city is one of the few truly linear cities in the
Netherlands. Once the powerhouse of manufacturing in Holland's Golden Age
during the 17th century the current city of 150,000 inhabitants came to be
after the villages of Assendelft. Krommenie, Wormeveer, Westzaan, Zaandijk and
Koog aan de Zaan merged with the tiny city of Zaandam in 1974. The city is located
north of Amsterdam along the banks of the river Zaan (or Saen) for its full
length.
In 2007 it was decided to upgrade the high street* of
Zaandam. The shopping centre near the station, the station bridge and a parking
garage were demolished to make way for the ambitious Inverdan Project. This includes a new city hall, a new station, a
new hotel a new shopping centre, new housing, two new parking garages and a
total revamp of the shopping street between the Dam in Zaandam and the station.
Between 2010 and 2013 the project was completed, with only a small portion yet
to be realised opposite city hall.
These low weatherboarded houses with clay roof tiles
(left an example from the sixteen hundreds) are the vernacular architecture of
the polders north of Amsterdam. the green colour is now known as Zaans Groen
(Zane Green). Originally the paint mills would have produced several green
paints all based on copper sulphite compounds that varied slightly in colour.
The colour has since been standardised together with Grachtengroen (Canal
Green), Fries Groen (Frisian Green), Hollands Groen (Holland Green) and
Oud-Hollands Groen (Old Dutch Green). The use of white frames and edging is
typical for the area around Zaanstad. A view back towards the Town Hall in the Inverdan
Project across the re-excavated Gedempte Gracht (lterally: Filled in Canal)
that now forms the central axis of the main shopping street linking the old dam
with the station. A large number of bridges connect the pedestrianised street
on both sides. The old dam that gave the city of Zaandam its name (right) is
actually a sluice - as all Dutch dams in water cities were - to better regulate
the water levels and at the same time provide a sheltered harbour.
The best known part of the Inverdan Project has become
the new hotel between the station and the shopping area. This eclectic
neo-traditionalist design by Wilfried van Winden wraps the 40 m high hotel
tower in a cloak of small wooden houses stacked on top of one another The
facade thus becomes a reference to the historic character of the area, but
vertical rather than horizontal. Considered kitsch by many an architecture
critic, I absolutely love it and don't think it is offensive in its historic
surroundings.
* highstreet is
used here as shopping street because the Dutch Hoogstraat means something very different in polders, namely the street on the dike. In actual fact
the shopping street of Zaandam is a Laagstraat
(literally Low Street) that stretches at a right angle to the dike into the
polder behind.
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