Courthouse
Amsterdam
Architects: KAAN Architecten // Project size: 60.000 m² GFA // Completion: 2021 // Awards: Best Building of the Year 2022 (BNA) - Identity and Iconic Value, Architectural Awards 2021 (Los Angeles Business Council) - Beyond LA
The Amsterdam courthouse, which will be commissioned in May 2021, houses the largest court in the Netherlands. The new court has 50 courtrooms and employs 1.000 people, including 200 judges who deliver 140.000 judgments per year.
In April 2016, the Real Estate Authority of the Netherlands selected the “New Amsterdam Court House” (NACH) consortium to design, finance, build, maintain and operate the new Amsterdam Court House. ABT led this consortium - together with Macquarie Capital, DVP, KAAN Architecten, Heijmans and Facilicom.
Oosterhoff was involved alongside ABT with its subsidiaries bbn adviseurs, Huygen and Meelis & Partner. In close cooperation, the Oosteroff subsidiaries were able to combine their respective special disciplines into an interdisciplinary technical planning including structural design, building physics, technical building equipment, safety and (fire) protection.
The design shows a monumental and at the same time open building that gives employees and visitors a view of the city and passers-by a glimpse into the building. It is of central importance to NACH that the administration of justice is a public matter of the utmost importance. A building of this kind should of course do justice to its importance, but at the same time not appear intimidating and "bunker-like". After all, judgments are pronounced here "in the name of the people". The forecourt, the central hall in the building, the foyers and the waiting areas for visitors are a continuation of the public urban space. Visitors can enter secured areas, while judges, representatives of the public prosecutor's office and other organs of the administration of justice have their own screened-off paths.
In order to complete the Implementation Realisation Plan (IRP) on time, concurrent engineering was chosen together with NACH. The NACH specialists work in parallel (in BIM) and not one after the other. The completed building blocks were then "copied" to the other planned courtrooms, offices and WC facilities. This method used to be very common, but digitalisation has made it obsolete. NACH now revived this method and can work even more cost-efficiently in combination with the latest methods and processes.
The NACH project team of around 100 people - including 35 from Oosterhoff - worked on the project under one roof using the LEAN method. Self-managing teams worked on each building block, while a target team oversaw the project as a whole. Within this structure, the partners were always able to make decisions together at the right time.
Scope of services: Integral advice // structural engineering, building services engineering, building physics engineering, fire protection planning, security & risk planning
Photos: Fernando Guerra
