CASA 400 AMSTERDAM Client: BPF Bouwinvest Amsterdam Rooms: 520 Gross floor area: 22.000 m2 Completion: 2010 Everyone in Amsterdam is familiar with Casa 400: a hotel in the summer for tourists and rooms for students in the off season. A unique formula still booking success after fifty years. But Casa 400 refuses to stay put: in 2010, it took possession of an impressive, brand-new building. More luxurious rooms, more modern facilities, a conference centre and a hotel now operating year round. The glass and aluminium of the crisp, clean, rhythmic façade sparkle in the sun. The new Casa 400 hotel-student complex is truly striking. Located on Ringdijk, just behind Wibautstraat, it towers 35 metres above its surrounding buildings. Its more than five hundred rooms make it one of the largest hotels in Amsterdam, but what really makes Casa 400 so unique is its special concept: from October to June, most of the hotel rooms serve as student housing. The new hotelstudent complex is sited just a few blocks away from the original building that received its first guests back in 1962. But the idea for a seasonal hotel plus student housing first developed in 1957. In the 1950s, during the post-war reconstruction period, there was a severe shortage of housing – and no affordable student housing whatsoever. At the same time, Amsterdam was attracting more and more tourists but lacked the necessary hotel accommodations.
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