The Polder Buiksloterham business park in the north of Amsterdam is slated to be transformed into a flagship borough with a circular economy of materials by 2030. In light of the economic situation at the beginning of the project, the city of Amsterdam opted for a slower, more sustainable transformation strategy around 15 years ago. Today, the area offers an exciting mix, with building collective projects and zero-energy houses popping up between logistics companies and hardware stores.
One of these projects is Stories, designed by Olaf Gipser Architects. It is located at the junction of a main traffic artery and an old harbour basin. Stories is 46 metres high and boasts 13 storeys, the top ten of which are made of wood. However, this is not visible at first glance, as the building is wrapped in an elegant white steel facade with tall niches for plants.

The project started with a call for tenders for which building collective projects were permitted to apply. One of the city’s important prerequisites was that the majority of the materials used in construction should be suitable for returning to the material cycle in future. Olaf Gipser – originally from Switzerland, but resident in Amsterdam for over 20 years – came up with the idea  of developing a hybrid wooden building with green spaces for the facades. 
The building houses a total of 29 individually designed flats and six commercial units. The flats have a ceiling height of 2.90 metres and measure in at between 43 and 235 square metres. The base of the building and the 7th and 11th floors each host a loft apartment that extends over two storeys.

As the designers were not yet ready to risk constructing a solid wood building with 13 storeys in 2015, and because a parking garage with 40 spots was required on the ground floor, the three-storey base of the building was made of concrete. Above that, the 32.5-metre wooden tower with its concrete central column rises into the sky. The architects moved the tower toward the road to create space for a communal rooftop terrace on the western end of the base; the residents have used the space to start an urban farm.

The tower is made of laminated timber. For each storey, 15 load-bearing elements measuring 160 to 240 mm in thickness form a grid with an axial dimension of 4.80 metres. These wooden bays have large openings that allow the spaces to be flexibly partitioned into one to six flats per storey. In order to allow for changes in future, more door openings than necessary were added to the corridor walls. This flexibility was important not only to the building collective, but to the architects, as well. Olaf Gipser is part of a network of 14 young firms that came together to publish a joint Dutch ‘Open Building’ manifesto. They consider making buildings as flexible as possible, particularly in terms of future changes in layout or function, as an essential aspect of sustainability.

The architects’ goal is for the deep, plant-covered facade to be more than just an outside space, to offer protection from the sun and prying eyes, and to be a filter for particulate matter; they also want it to serve as a habitat for insects and birds. From inside the flats, the green niches actually do feel like little floating gardens. From the perspective of passers-by, however, the steel facade lends Stories an elegant, airy look, and thanks to the different colours of the leaves on the five species of trees, its appearance also changes constantly throughout the seasons.
Transparent balcony glazing that can be opened in a flexible way underscores the elegant look of the steel facade. The glazing is arranged in such a way that, in combination with the vertical railings, it animates the facade.

Due to the varying balcony sizes, storey heights and positions in the building, the glazing is either floor to ceiling – to access the floating gardens – or is mounted to a glass balustrade. Twelve configurations of the Solarlux SL 25 (on balustrade) and SL 25 XXL (floor to ceiling) systems were used in total. These also include versions in which the glass elements can be moved across both corners, allowing the previously protected balcony to be fully opened on all sides. The successor to the tried-and-tested SL 25 is the innovative Proline T from Solarlux.