In the former harbor of Borneo Sporenburg, on the river Ij near the center of Amsterdam, the grey, lopsided Whale Residential Complex offers an outstanding instance of contemporary town planning, incorporating a commercial and residential complex. It is not difficult to see where this building gets its name, because of the unusual shape of its roof, reminiscent of the profile of a huge whale diving under the water and then surfacing.

The scale, the angular forms and the facade of Whale Residential Complex have won an iconic status in the redeveloped harbour district. It contrasts with the surroundings, as it is one of three large-scale buildings within a development mainly consisting of low-rise architecture, like a meteor fallen from the skies. The building, with impressive size, incorporates a great variety of housing and spatial typologies. The block contains a total of 214 apartments distributed over thirteen floors, commercial space, a semi-public interior courtyard and an underground car park.

The wooden finishes ensure that the environment is warm and sound-absorbent. The outdoor garden, designed by Adrian Geuze of West 8 Landscape Architects, was intended to combine the density of an inner-city area with a suburban feel and program, its low-rise buildings punctuated by open spaces. The Whale Residential Complex’s characteristic profile is visible even at night thanks to illumination of the raised ends of the roof.

While the Whale Residential Complex’s plot is large, the size of a football pitch, the design of its interior and the landscaping of the central courtyard garden create a feeling of intimacy. The interior of the building consists of an alternating series of galleries attenuating all impressions of heaviness and providing access to the apartments on the same level and on the upper floor. Openings and galleries are also staggered to produce rhythmic variation in the building’s facades. The form created by the sloped lines strongly differentiates the residential units, with truly exceptional apartments on the lower and upper levels of the building.

On the outside, taut lines combine with the aluminium of the roof and the natural zinc panels of the facade, imprinting a sort of depth and metropolitan elegance on them. The windows are offset to blend and blur perception of the repetition of floors and create an appearance of definite formal unity extending from the pillared foundations to the roof. The extraordinary design permits the Whale Residential Complex to offer plenty of views of the surrounding environment, including both the dense urban fabric of the city center and the waters of the Ij River.

The line of the aluminium roof is angled follows the route of the sun, so that the building is elevated on two sides: to ensure that all the dwellings receive sufficient sunlight, fresh air and open views. A courtyard in the center and the design of the lower floors also allow light to penetrate inside and underneath the main volume. This center courtyard is complete redefinition of the closed block: what has traditionally been an interior domain appears almost like a public park.

Despite the strong prevalence of empty spaces (openings, loggias, windows) over full spaces (opaque parts of the facade), the Whale Residential Complex looks like a solid with an essentially even, undifferentiated surface. The local residents have nicknamed the building the “Sphinx”, struck by the fish-like shine on it as well as the enigmatic yet simple, pared-down feeling of this block rising out of a sea of lower level constructions.

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