The project site is located in the heart of IJ Burg island and is a space of provocation to its highly dense urban environment. It resists to stay natural on an artificial land. Just like the attempts of Van Eyck to turn the cities into playgrounds in the 1950s, the plot persists to remain as a natural playground.
Our aim is to help the site bring out its characteristics and transform it into a ‘playscape’ by creating a positive impact on the island in a wider scale. The concept is based on two contradicting systems that are reflected to the two long facades of the building: the playground; space of nature and freedom, and the spatial apparatus that contributes to the built environment and works as a paradox to the free space.

The plot creates degraded scenery from the strict border of the marina that represents the urbanism, to the natural border that represents freedom. This gradient system inhabits the dwellings on the concrete border of the marina, creating a piazza with the surrounding urban context; whereas the Architecture degrades towards the natural coast on the other side, providing Architectural freedom. Each of the proposed flats is oriented in a way that they face on both the urban and the natural coast in order to inhabit the context of ‘duality’ for the users, which gives the project its quality of the two-faced God ‘Janus’.
Interior spaces follow the concept and host the private spaces towards the façade facing the natural coast; and all the service spaces towards the façade facing the urban context with the marina.

The challenge of accessibility due to a length of 140 meters and a width of 12 meters is solved through the multiple entrances towards a corridor that cuts both skins of the building and enables direct access to each flat. The spaces are organized primarily according to sizes rather than functions, as interior spaces are conceived as stages for a set of different possible functions according to the areas.