Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Over the past two years, the small 200 by 100-meter area between the Rijswijkstraat and the Heemstedestraat in Amsterdam Nieuw-West (New West) has undergone a complete metamorphosis. Before the transformation, there was nothing particularly distinctive about this patch of land. Just as elsewhere in the Nieuw-West district, the slab buildings had been neatly paired in L-shapes, each pair juxtaposed in such a way that they together produced publicly accessible inner yards, half-open yet comfortably sheltered from the traffic of the Heemstedestraat—the main corridor into the city centre. This pattern was repeated several times on adjacent lots, as if the urban planner had simply repeatedly ‘stamped’ it onto the empty plan [1]. The freestanding slabs were entirely subsumed in a park-like environment. The private gardens, small by comparison, were surrounded by broad belts of public green that separated the L-shaped blocks from the street, seamlessly connecting each green space, from the inner yards to the smallest flowerbed running alongside the housing for elderly people.
Repository Citation
Griffioen, Roel. "Bulletproof Glass. A Short History of Transparency, Public Space and Surveillance in Amsterdam Nieuw-West." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 12, no. 3, 2012, pp. 1–24. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol12/iss3/5