Het Eemhuis

The Eemhuis combines a number of existing cultural institutes in the city of Amersfoort: the city library, the KAdE Arts Centre, the heritage archives and a school for dance, music and visual arts. The building is organized as a vertical stacking of these programs that enhances the continuity of the public domain into the building. At the ground floor, the public square becomes a covered plaza, which gradually forms a terraced library. On the top of the stairs the library spills into a vast open space overlooking the city. Above it hovers the archive volume that forms the ceiling of this space. The attic of the building houses the arts school. The three arts departments (theatre & dance, visual arts and music) are each expressed separately as cantilevered beams that crown the complex.

With the completion of the Eemcentrum, Amersfoort will end up with a centre that is commensurate with the city’s size. The Eemhuis Cultural Cluster is one of the public attractions in this area is The size of the building is 15,000 m2. The problem with this type of building combining cultural functions is that all institutions have different, elaborate and sometimes conflicting requirements that nevertheless need to be forged into a single whole. The different functions must be able to operate at the same time without interfering with each other. This is complicated in terms of construction and architecture. To ensure that construction is manageable then is a real skill. The same is true in terms of developing relatively simple and repeating details.