Block party

A 1960s Dutch housing project reborn

T he Abbot of Bijlmer pads around his sunlit home in a slogan T-shirt and full beard. Most of the disciples who occupy this nine-flat ‘cloister’ in the Kleiburg building have gone for the day, so he can move freely through the communal kitchen to the slender chapel with the cross-shaped window, past full-height glass to the sweeping balcony. Beyond it, children frolic in a quiet common dotted with mature oaks. They’re lucky: this residential complex is one of the loveliest within the controversial social housing project called Bijlmermeer in south-east Amsterdam.

At a long wooden dining table, the abbot (real name: Johannes van den Akker) cracks open a bottle of Kleiburg Sicilian white beer, a citrusy blend he brews, like a good Dutch Trappist, in a nearby hangar surrounded by gardens. The microbrewery, which serves enlightened dishes such as sustainable smokedmackerel salad with grapefruit, helps him underwrite the cloister’s expenses and shelter homeless families.

A decade ago, the Kleiburg building’s 500 flats were crumbling to their foundations. Developers bought the lot for a single, symbolic euro and hired XVW Architectuur and NL Architects to rescue it. NL’S Kamiel Klaasse says Bijlmermeer had earned a ‘street cred that hadn’t yet filtered to policymakers. Many famous rappers came out of the area, using the buildings and elevated roads in their videos.’

The architects employed great restraint that netted huge gains at Kleiburg. They repositioned lifts that had been slapped onto the exterior and tore off cheap pointing to expose the warm concrete underneath.