The Zuidas area in Amsterdam has been actively built up since the late 1990s: it is an analogue of such business hubs as La Defense located outside the historic city centers. However, in addition to office skyscrapers, there are also mid-rise buildings. These include a complex of two residential buildings "Brothers Gershwin" bureau LEVS. Its name comes from the street where it is located: like many others in Zuidas, it bears the name of the composer - George Gershwin. The developers have added to it his older brother and co-author, the poet Ayru Gershwin: among their joint works is the opera Porgy and Bess, where the famous Summertime originates. The complex contains 159 apartments for rent in the middle price segment and a two-storey underground garage for 200 cars.
The buildings have common features, but still each of them - with its own "character", including - due to different solutions of the facades, clad with Hagemeister clinker of three grades. It made it possible to give a completely new area of the city the diversity inherent in its multi-layered old parts, on which the construction of the LEVS workshop is largely oriented. So, next to it is the green post-war residential area Beutenweldert, and a little further - Amsterdam-Zuid, that is, "South", built according to the "South Plan" (1915) Hendrik Berlage by architects
Amsterdam School.
The Gershwin Brothers composition was also influenced by the prevailing angle of incidence of the sun's rays, the optimal views from the windows and the context of dense development, including, for example,
residential tower 900 Mahler, also clad with Hagemeister clinker.
Building "George" - 12-storey, it mostly consists of two-room apartments with an area of 50-60 m2. The two-height basement with six-meter windows is occupied by a restaurant. The project is inspired by the "dormitory" at the time of its creation by Beutenweldert with its laconic modernist buildings, which is why its author Adrian Maut from LEVS calls this work a "suburban" building. Its solid volume “keeps” the corner of two streets, and wide strips of light concrete are combined with clinker surfaces of two grades: yellow Rostock GT and white Weimar HS. The exterior is enlivened by the balconies, while the gallery-corridors are inscribed in the volume of the building.
The seven-storey "Aira" includes three-room apartments with an area of 75 m2 and penthouses. The plan in the shape of the letter "U" with an inner courtyard made it possible to bring out protruding galleries there, as well as to give all apartments on the ground floor their own entrance from the street. From the south, from the side of the canal, spacious terraces are placed, the rest of the apartments received semi-loggias, semi-balconies with an area of 12 m2 each. Ira is associated with the traditions of the Amsterdam School with its red brick and richness of detail. Here, the clinker yellow Rostock GT is combined with the reddish-brown Lübeck GT and in this neighborhood looks more intense than in the restrained color of the neighboring building. The Lübeck GT enhances this color impression with its rich dross texture. The concrete strips are narrower here than on the facades of "George". It is important to note that the canal embankment received clinker cladding corresponding to their facades from each of the buildings.
Adrian Maut emphasizes that the Hagemeister clinker provided the tactility and liveliness necessary for the project in its active environment. These properties are enhanced by the masonry - double dressing in half a brick, its format (in particular, the height of 71 mm), as well as the choice of the color of the seams: anthracite in the Aira case, light in George's case (for both gradings used in each case) …
About the project:
Architects: LEVS (Amsterdam)
Completion of construction: April 2018
Total area: 14,000 m2
Clinker sorting Hagemeister: Lübeck GT, Weimar HS, Rostock GT
Clinker format: NF 240 x 115 x 71 mm
Clinker facade area: 5 600 m2
