Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ: A Glass Box for New Music
Why is it significant?
Face the water and look up at the roof above you: a great flat canopy that shoots out over the terrace, around nineteen metres beyond the glass walls, as if the building were leaning forward to look at the IJ.
Key Facts
| Place | Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ: A Glass Box for New Music |
|---|---|
| Address | Piet Heinkade 1, 1019 BR Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37830, 4.91310 |
| Part of Walk | Ships, Silos and a Red Python: Modern Architecture of Amsterdam's Eastern Docklands |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the water and look up at the roof above you: a great flat canopy that shoots out over the terrace, around nineteen metres beyond the glass walls, as if the building were leaning forward to look at the IJ. Under it is a tall glass box, and stuck to the side of that box, like a dark container somebody forgot to unload, is another building altogether.
This is the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, the Music Building on the IJ, designed by the Danish architects 3XN and opened in 2005. It is the city's main concert house for contemporary classical music, the kind of music that is still being written, played by orchestras and ensembles who like to experiment. Inside, the main hall was built to be flexible, so it can be set up differently for each kind of performance.
And that dark box on the side? That is the Bimhuis, the city's legendary jazz club. It was founded in 1974 by improvising musicians, and for decades it lived in a converted building in the old centre. When it moved here, it got its own black hall, cantilevered out above the street, with a huge window behind the stage. Musicians play with the lights of the harbour and the passing trains behind them.
Notice the name of the quay, too: the Piet Heinkade. Piet Hein was the admiral who, in 1628, captured a Spanish silver fleet off Cuba, the greatest prize in Dutch naval history. This was a working quay where ocean-going ships once moored, and its new buildings were designed to keep that view of the water open to everyone.
There is something lovely about it: a harbour that used to ship coffee and tobacco now ships sound across the water. From here, follow the Piet Heinkade east along the water for a few hundred metres, until a long, sober warehouse appears with a bridge running straight through it.