The Whale

One of the meteorites was ‘The Whale’, designed by the architect Frits van Dongen of the architectural office Architecten.cie. The sloping roofline and the use of zinc façade panels, as well as the location on an island, does indeed arouse associations with a fish, even if a whale does not have scales.
The internal programme comprised 214 apartments, with two thirds social housing, sufficient work space and an underground parking facility the size of a football pitch. Van Dongen’s brief was, with a limited budget, to house this extensive programme in a large block and, at the same time, design a building that ‘worked’ at street level.

In order to provide the lowermost storey with direct sunlight, the building was raised. As a result, the inner garden courtyard is visible from street level, and so functions as a (semi-) public space.

With its striking roofline, The Whale is very much a landmark. The course of the sun determined the building’s form, so that the sun’s highest position towards sunset is level with the building’s roofline.

The Whale has received international acclaim, but in an interview Frits van Dongen has said that he regarded the words of a young girl as the greatest compliment: she found the building small but also very large; alluding to the scale of The whale as a landmark on Borneo-Sporenburg and the view at street level. (Arcam, Amanda Terpstra)