Hotels in Amsterdam

Floating houses – A unique solution to overcrowding in Netherlands

The amount of water in and around Amsterdam is its pride and also its enemy. Now, the people of Amsterdam have set forth a unique example of using water in order to face overcrowding as about a hundred houses float on a lake in the Amsterdam neighbourhood of Ijburg.

The real estate company Monteflore has built more than half the floating homes off the western shore of the Ijmeer lake, a dozen kilometres from the Amsterdam city centre. These houses are cubic, with walls of plastic and untreated wood in neutral colours, built entirely with non-polluting materials. Resting on floating, concrete bases fixed to two solidly planted pillars to keep them stable, all the while allowing them to adjust to the water level, these houses are linked to dry land by wharfs, through which they receive gas, electricity and running water.

“There is a lot of water in the Netherlands. It is used for navigation and recreation. We want to see if it can also be inhabited,” said Ton van Namen, director of real estate company Monteflore.

“We are in the experimental phase, but this may be the beginning of the solution to residential overcrowding,” said Igor Roovers, director of a grouping created by the Amsterdam city council to manage the Ijburg development — the biggest of its kind in Europe.

43-year-old pilot Rik Uijlenhoet has a 175 square-metre (218 square-yard) dwelling, its large windows looking out on a vast expanse of greyish lake water. He says, “To live in this house gives me a sense of freedom. I have the feeling of being permanently on holiday. One doesn’t realize that one is on the water: you only really notice it when you see the chandelier in the lounge sway slightly.”

Eventually, the Ijburg development will have about 170 floating houses surrounded by 18,000 new lodgings being built on artificial islands.

Other Dutch municipalities, like Almere on a river just east of the Ijmeer, and Leeuwarden, in the north, have also launched experimental floating house projects.