Although it is unmistakably different in appearance from the Museum’s original structure, the new building of the Stedelijk designed by Benthem Crouwel matches the scale and cornice line of the 1895 building and is connected to it directly, so that the two are fully integrated without either one’s being compromised.
According to Mels Crouwel, “The Stedelijk Museum of Willem Sandberg, the director who put the Museum on the international map, was our starting point. He stripped the interior of decoration and had it painted white, creating a neutral background for art. Our plan for the exterior is based on retaining the 19th-century architecture, adding 21st-century technology and painting everything in Sandberg white.”
The new building appears from the outside to be an entirely smooth white volume, oblong in shape and canted upward at one end, which is supported on white columns. Already known by many in Amsterdam by the nickname of “the bathtub,” this floating form, which spreads outward at the top into a broad, flat roof, is actually the envelope for the second-floor galleries and auditorium and the offices above. It is entirely encased in glass at the transparent ground-floor level, which houses the main entrance and lobby, bookstore and restaurant.
