Java-eiland Canals: A Herengracht in Miniature
Why is it significant?
Stand on the little bridge and look down the canal: a row of narrow houses on each side, every one different. One is all glass, the next is dark brick, the one after it has a bright blue door and a balcony shaped like a ship's bridge.
Key Facts
| Place | Java-eiland Canals: A Herengracht in Miniature |
|---|---|
| Address | Seranggracht, 1019 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37840, 4.93310 |
| Part of Walk | Ships, Silos and a Red Python: Modern Architecture of Amsterdam's Eastern Docklands |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the little bridge and look down the canal: a row of narrow houses on each side, every one different. One is all glass, the next is dark brick, the one after it has a bright blue door and a balcony shaped like a ship's bridge. Bicycles, potted plants, a boat tied up at the bottom of the steps. It feels like a tiny piece of the seventeenth-century canal ring dropped onto a harbour pier.
That is exactly the idea. Sjoerd Soeters' plan cut four short canals across Java-eiland and lined them with canal houses designed by many different architects. The old Herengracht never had one designer either. Each merchant built his own house in his own taste, within strict rules about plot width and height, and the variety is what makes it beautiful. Soeters borrowed the recipe and updated it for the 1990s.
Then look at the bridges. They are deliberately odd, twisting and bending, painted in strong colours, more like sculptures than engineering. They were designed by the artists Guy Rombouts and Monica Droste, and no two are the same. Some of them seem to wobble on purpose, as if they were drawn by hand rather than with a ruler.
Behind the canal houses, the island has bigger apartment blocks wrapped around green courtyards, and a long promenade on the water's edge. It was a deliberate mix of high and low, big and small. In a country that had spent decades building identical housing estates, this island was a statement that people wanted streets with character again.
At the eastern end of the island, at the Azartplein, two calm, stony buildings by the Swiss firm Diener and Diener stand guard, and Java-eiland runs straight into its neighbour. Keep walking east onto the KNSM-eiland and look for a huge dark block that seems to have folded itself around a courtyard.