REM Eiland was once an anti-establishment icon, but the steel structure has recently found a second life as a symbol of community revitalization. First built in 1964 as an oil-rig prototype, it established its sea legs about five-and-a-half miles off the coast of south Holland—just outside Dutch territorial waters—as a pirate radio post. It only broadcasted for four months before being shut down by the government, who went on to use the rig as a site to test and monitor the local waters. In 2006, it was dismantled and brought ashore.

Photo: Ewout Huibers

The timing was no coincidence: Amsterdam’s shipping ports and industrial zones have been the subject of a large-scale reclamation project over the past decade, with design hotels and MTV offices finding hip new homes inside abandoned factories and warehouses. In that context, to Amsterdam entrepreneur Nick van Loon, the red-and-white stilted REM tower looked like a missed opportunity. With the financial backing of housing corporation DeKey, he approached local architecture firm Concrete to turn the derelict construction into an office complex and restaurant in Houthaven, a port neighborhood near the center of the Dutch capital whose commercial transformation was already underway.

Photo: Ewout Huibers

Despite the fact that REM Eiland “wasn’t designed with any aesthetic perspective,” says Concrete partner and project architect Erik-Jan Vermeulen, the firm made a conscious effort to keep its heritage intact. “We did everything in the spirit of the original,” he says, noting that any modifications that were made—including extra bridges and frames, a heating and ventilation system, and an additional story built above the existing helicopter platform—were “purely functional.” Even the legally mandated elevator that takes people from river- to sky-level was hung externally, altering only the structure’s silhouette. The sky terrace it transcends to, though, offers visitors sweeping views of a project that is the embodiment of change in just about every other sense.

Concrete Architects
REM Eiland

Photo: Jim Ellam

Photo: Jim Ellam