NEMO Science Museum: Renzo Piano's Green Ship
Why is it significant?
Walk towards the huge green hull rising out of the water, tilted upwards like the bow of a ship about to leave the harbour. Its skin is green copper, and its roof slopes down to the ground in a long flight of wide steps that people climb like a hill.
Key Facts
| Place | NEMO Science Museum: Renzo Piano's Green Ship |
|---|---|
| Address | Oosterdok 2, 1011 VX Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37390, 4.91210 |
| Part of Walk | Ships, Silos and a Red Python: Modern Architecture of Amsterdam's Eastern Docklands |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk towards the huge green hull rising out of the water, tilted upwards like the bow of a ship about to leave the harbour. Its skin is green copper, and its roof slopes down to the ground in a long flight of wide steps that people climb like a hill.
The architect was Renzo Piano, the Italian who, as a young man, had co-designed the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He was given an awkward site, right on top of the entrance to the IJ tunnel, the road tunnel that dives under the water to the north of the city. Instead of fighting the tunnel, he used it. The building rises from the tunnel ramp itself, so cars disappear underneath while the museum seems to sail out over them.
It opened in 1997 under the name newMetropolis, and in 2000 it became NEMO. But the institution is much older than the building. It began in 1923 as the Museum of Labour, founded by the artist Herman Heijenbrock, to show working people how industry and technology worked. Today it is the largest science centre in the Netherlands, and on a school-holiday morning you can hear it before you see it.
The best trick of all is on the outside. That sloping roof is a public square. In good weather, Amsterdammers climb up with a picnic, children splash in the water features, and the view stretches across the Oosterdok to the old shipping warehouses and the station roofs. Piano gave the city a piece of hillside in a country that has almost none.
From up there you can also see the next stop, a glass box on the edge of the IJ with a roof that leans out over the water. Come back down, cross the water towards the Piet Heinkade, and head north to the waterfront.