Open Frame By Elastik & Mat Studio

Elastik, in collaboration with MAT Studio, has won the 2009 Ymere NAi ideas competition with Open Frame, a proposal for a mixed-use development incorporating a Frame magazine design gallery, hotel, apartments and studios.

Elastik’s Open Frame proposal for a 15,000 m2 landmark building on the north bank of the IJ in Amsterdam neatly fits the urban plan. According to Elastik, the area needs its own central space for socio-economic interaction, ‘a concentrated sustainable centre that ties people to the north bank of the IJ and a program so rich and enticing that it will woo people into making a home on this promising piece of land.’

Elastik identified Frame Publishers and the EMB Hotel Group as the entrepreneurs able to make the plan a reality. Open Frame takes Amsterdam’s need for a gallery showing contemporary industrial design and architecture and uses it to enable a sustainable economic model supporting a public cultural attraction in this new location.

Open Frame enables inhabitants and guests to explore industrial design in an immersive, participatory manner. It not only shows the end results of the design process in a spectacular spiral gallery, it also opens up the creative process of design by allowing guests to visit the studios and offices that are located in the building.

The hotel will not adhere to the strict limitations of the star system. More important is the fact that guests will be surrounded by design objects curated by the gallery, which they can buy if they like.

According to the jury: ‘The Open Frame design offers a solid elaboration in the first-round proposal. The well thought-out placement and consideration of the different aspects of the immediate vicinity are noteworthy. The proposal optimally benefits from the location’s qualities concerning the view, while simultaneously referencing other big volumes along the IJ. The jury applauds the intelligent treatment of this complex task.’

Click here to read the jury report.