De Zalmhaven. Photo: Kaan Architecten, ZCV.
Catalysts for adventure TEXT: FRANK VAN LIESHOUT | PHOTOS:DAM & PARTNERS ARCHITECTEN
‘Starchitects’ against their will, father and son Cees and Diederik Dam hold fast to their design principles of comfort, commitment and freedom. “It’s about creating beauty in its entirety.” Started in the 1960s as Cees Dam Architects and renamed Dam en Partners Architects in 2002, father and son Dam have, under different guises, been responsible for a wide range of projects, stretching from complex urban developments, theatres, town halls and hotels, to luxurious residential homes, interior design and furniture. 14 | Issue 68 | August 2019
Cees Dam has been a household name in Dutch architecture for more than five decades, famous for iconic buildings such as the Amsterdam Opera and City Hall, the Optiebeurs building (now the home of Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad) and the House of the Future. Since his son Diederik joined in the 1990s, their firm have handled some of the most prestigious projects in Holland’s modern urban landscape, including the country’s two tallest towers, Maastoren and Zalmhaventoren in Rotterdam, as well as Almere Town Hall and, most recently, the Hourglass
Building in Amsterdam’s Zuidas financial district.
Icons Yet, despite their impressive output of unmistakably iconic buildings, both father and son Dam ironically have a real problem with the current demand for ‘iconic’. “Every time we are approached for the design of a large office project, one of the first demands on the list is that it must be iconic,” Diederik explains, of his frustration. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing intrinsically bad about a building being an icon, but first of all, the