City Building

City Building

OZ as Architects

104 apartments, 11 penthouses and commercial space, car park with 136 parking places. Renovation of the precious fifties bank building by the famous architect J.J.P. Oud.


City Building is located on a difficult site: for almost fifty years, none of the many attempts to realize a building here were successful. Finally, this project has found a way of resolving the struggle between the outspoken demands and hidden desires of various political players and market forces.


The design is fuelled by the need to boldly express the tensions and contradictions behind the delicate consensus that it has established. The City Building contributes to an ambitious municipal scheme for the reprogramming of a long neglected neighborhood. In order to make the project economically viable, a massive amount of new housing had to be attached to a precious fifties bank building by the famous architect J.J.P. Oud. The new building mitigates an enormous scale difference between cozy alleyways and a vast open-air market square. The entirely glazed volume starts out like an extension of the bank building. It unfolds into a big, independent object, revealing the intestines of the bank. An open commercial space on the ground floor animates the empty square when there is no market. On market days however, the square is completely crammed. The commercial space then provides an escape route by linking the square to a restaurant in the quiet, introverted banking hall. Sitting in the bar of the restaurant, one will be able to relax and enjoy the view back over the market.

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