The KNSM Island is a man-made island in the

Eastern Docklands The Eastern Docklands ( nl, Oostelijk Havengebied) is a neighborhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands, located between the IJ (Amsterdam), IJ and the Nieuwe Vaart in the Boroughs of Amsterdam, borough of Amsterdam-Oost. The harbor area was constructed in ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. KNSM stands for the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot-Maatschappij, the Royal Dutch Steamboat Shipping company which used to have its headquarters and its docks on the island. It is now a large residential area containing modern architecture with a mostly well-off population.

History

Originally the island was a

breakwater Breakwater may refer to: * Breakwater (structure), a structure for protecting a beach or harbour Places * Breakwater, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia * Breakwater Island Breakwater Island () is a small island in the Palme ...

for the

Oostelijke Handelskade The Eastern Docklands ( nl, Oostelijk Havengebied) is a neighborhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands, located between the IJ and the Nieuwe Vaart in the borough of Amsterdam-Oost. The harbor area was constructed in the late nineteenth century to allow f ...

, just like the adjacent

Java Island Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's most ...

. The islands level was later raised with soil dredged from the

North Sea Canal The North Sea Canal ( nl, Noordzeekanaal) is a Dutch ship canal from Amsterdam to the North Sea at IJmuiden, constructed between 1865 and 1876 to enable seafaring vessels to reach the port of Amsterdam. This man-made channel terminates at Amster ...

, creating a harbor. In 1903, the KNSM occupied this harbor terrain that covered most of the island. In 1956 the KNSM celebrated its centennial, but the

decolonization Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...

of the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

and the growth of

cargo Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including trans ...

transport marked the end of the company. KNSM moved parts of its operations to the Western Docklands of Amsterdam and ceased others, finally leaving the island in 1977. In 1981 it merged with other major shipping companies to become

Nedlloyd Nedlloyd was a Dutch shipping company, formed in 1970 as the result of a merger of several shipping lines: *Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland (SMN) *Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd (KRL) *Koninklijke Java-China-Paketvaart-Lijnen (KJCPL) *Vereen ...

. During the 1980s,

squatters Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...

, artists, and urban nomads occupied the area. In the 1990s, groups occupying what had come to be known as "sloaps" ("sites left over after r beforeplanning") who were originally tolerated by the municipality were slowly ordered to leave.

Redevelopment

In the 1990s the entire area was reshaped into a housing area, based on a 1988 blueprint by

Jo Coenen Jo Coenen (born 30 September 1949, in Heerlen) is a Dutch architect and urban planner. He studied architecture at the Eindhoven University of Technology (graduating in 1975), and later held professorships at TU Karlsruhe, Eindhoven University of ...

, his first big project. He envisioned a mixed use of the space, and planned "super blocks," big buildings containing individual homes and apartments along a central avenue, mimicking the organization of the island's former warehouses and storage buildings. The redevelopment of the island was part of a masterplan for turning the entire Eastern Docklands into modern residential areas to allow for the expansion of the city. Many of the old buildings on the KNSM Island have been preserved by order of the city. The structures of the old

cafeteria A cafeteria, sometimes called a canteen outside the U.S., is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school ...

, the houses of the medical doctors, a storage building ("''Loods 6''"), a customs building, and the office of the Rijn Scheepvaart Maatschappij still remain. Original plans initially called for an exclusive neighborhood of home owners, but the city mandated a significant portion of the homes to be built as rentals in order to attract a more diverse population. Still, the island is known as a place for

yuppies Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...

; the English paper ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'' called it "Dockland chic." ''Loods 6'', a building typifying 1950s design and architecture currently contains artists' work spaces, a gallery, and an art exchange also houses an exposition dedicated to the island's history. The former company park, built in 1956, was preserved and restored in 1994 with the help of original designer

Mien Ruys Wilhelmina Jacoba Moussault-Ruys (14 February 1904 – 9 January 1999), was a Dutch landscape and garden architect. Her gardening legacy is maintained in the Dutch town of Dedemsvaart, which is home to the ''Tuinen Mien Ruys''. With people such a ...

; and was renamed in her honor to ''Mien Ruysplantsoen''.

Accessibility

The Azartplein links the KNSM Island to the Java Island, and is the final stop of tram line 7.

New buildings on the island

*''Emerald Empire'', by

. *''Piraeus'', by German architects

Hans Kollhoff Hans Kollhoff (born 18 September 1946 in Bad Lobenstein, Thuringia) is a German architect and professor. He is a representative of Postmodern and New Classical Architecture, as well as a protagonist of New Urbanism. Early life Kollhoff spent the ...

and Christian Rapp (1989–1994). 304 homes in 150 different types, 95% of which low-income housing. *''Albert'', by Belgian architect Bruno Albert, with a metal fence by Belgian artist Narcisse Tordoir. *''Sky Dome'', a twenty-story apartment building by

Wiel Arets Wiel Arets (, born ) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist, industrial designer and the former Dean of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, in the United States of America. Arets was pr ...

. *''Hoogland'', by Swiss architectural firm

Diener & Diener Diener & Diener is an architectural firm established in Basel, Switzerland in 1942. The second generation of Diener & Diener has been active since 1980. The Basel office, along with its subsidiary in Berlin, has been headed by Roger Diener, since ...

Amphitrite

When the KNSM celebrated its centennial, in 1959, the employees donated a group of sculptures and a fountain, dedicated to

Amphitrite In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite (; grc-gre, Ἀμφιτρίτη, Amphitrítē) was the goddess of the sea, the queen of the sea, and the wife of Poseidon. She was a daughter of Nereus and Doris (or Oceanus and Tethys).Roman, L., & Rom ...

and made by Dutch/Flemish sculptor Albert Termote. The sculptures had to be moved to make way for housing in 1981 and were removed to the Oosterdok, near the

Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum The National Maritime Museum ( nl, Het Scheepvaartmuseum, ) is a maritime museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The museum had 419,060 visitors in 2012. It ranked as 11th most visited museum in the Netherlands in 2013. The museum had 300,0 ...

. In 2009 they returned to the island in the Azartplein.

References

External links

KNSM Island
on the site of ''Oostelijk Havengebied''
Model of the Piraeus building on the KNSM Island in Google's 3d warehouse
{{Neighborhoods of Amsterdam Amsterdam-Oost Artificial islands of Amsterdam Mixed-use developments in the Netherlands Neighbourhoods of Amsterdam New Urbanism communities Squatting in the Netherlands