Borneo-Sporenburg and the Python Bridge

Neighborhood · Oostelijk Havengebied (Oost)Amsterdam,Netherlands

Two former Amsterdam harbour quays rebuilt as streets where sixty owners each hired their own architect, no two houses matching.

Borneo-Sporenburg is a street where no two houses match. On the Scheepstimmermanstraat, sixty narrow plots were sold to individual buyers who each hired their own architect, so glass stands beside timber and timber beside steel, and one house has a slot cut straight through it. It was the first self-build street in twentieth-century Amsterdam. These are private homes on two former harbour quays, so the fronts are all you get — and the fronts are the point. The two peninsulas were harbour quays with railway sidings around a basin dug in 1874, and they emptied when the shipping lines left. From 1993 the city and the planner Adriaan Geuze handed out rules instead of designs: three storeys, front doors onto the street, and thirty to fifty per cent of every plot left open as patio or terrace. The result fits a hundred dwellings into every hectare with no tower block anywhere, and daylight reaches the rooms through those openings rather than from the sides. People live here rather than visit, and after dark the quays empty.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Walk the Scheepstimmermanstraat on the water side — The canal-facing backs are where the architects took the real risks, with steps down to private jetties and rooms hung out over the water.
The Python Bridge is stepped all the way over — Its hump clears nine and a half metres for boats, so a bicycle must be carried and a wheelchair cannot cross.
Nothing here costs anything and nothing here is staffed — These are lived-in streets with no visitor centre, no signs and no shop, so bring what you need with you.
Give it an hour on foot, not a whole afternoon — The two quays and the bridge take about forty minutes at a slow walk, and there is nothing to queue for.

Things to do

1
Walk past all sixty houses without stopping
Take the Scheepstimmermanstraat straight through at walking pace, then turn round and do it again slowly. The first pass shows you that no two houses match; the second shows you the rules they all obeyed, because every one is three storeys and every front door opens straight onto the pavement.
2
Climb the Python Bridge and look down the basin
Take the steps to the top of the hump. From up there the water runs straight between the two quays, and you can see the whole low roofline at once, broken only by the two big blocks. It is the only place on the peninsulas where you get above the houses.