The holiday house we designed on the beautiful island of Terschelling in the Dutch province of Friesland is nominated for the Architecture Prize of Friesland. We would be very happy with your vote:

We had an incredibly inspiring evening on the 10th of December at the awards ceremony of the Abe Bonnemaprijs voor Jonge Architecten 2022. All the projects have been combined in a wonderful publication that can be downloaded below. The catalogue includes the jury report which we’re very proud of.

“De architecten zijn erg gericht geweest op esthetiek en ambachtelijke details, maar het huis is ontegenzeggelijk ook heel knus geworden – en dat is knap. Op het niveau van details hebben de architecten alles uit de kast gehaald om te laten zien wat zij kunnen. Daarin zijn zij volgens de jury zeer geslaagd. Het getuigt van vakmanschap dat de architecten samen met de aannemer een hoogwaardig kwaliteitsniveau in de uitvoering hebben bereikt. Het huis zit vol met zorgvuldige details waarbij steeds doordachte keuzes zijn gemaakt. Het ontwerpplezier spat ervan af. “

Unknown Architect is honoured to be nominated for the Abe Bonnema Prijs 2022 for young architects. Our House in the Dunes is among five projects selected by the jury consisting of Meta Knol, Steven Delva, Ninke Happel, Kees Kaan, Hedwig Saam, Gus Tielens and Jan Nauta. The award ceremony will take place on the 10th of December in the Rijksmuseum.

We are incredibly excited with the publication of our House in the Dunes in the Architecture in the Netherlands Yearbook 2021/2022. We are honoured to be part of this great selection of work by our fellow colleagues. The Yearbook is the international showcase for architecture in the Netherlands. In this year’s 35th edition the role of the architect and our shared opportunities for the future are investigated. Find more information or order a copy through the link below.

We’re giving a lecture today about our work and inspiration for the Architectuurcentrum Nijmegen. The lecture is part of an annual series with talks by architects and artists and has previously included Monadnock, Anne Dessing, GAFPA, Happel Cornelisse Verhoeven and others. Tickets to the event at Lux or link to the live stream are available through the link below!

Our House in the Dunes has recently been completed, after starting construction in januari 2021. The house is constructed as a stacking of three elements: a solid concrete base, a panoramic window that connects the ground floor to the surrounding dune landscape and an asymmetrical timber roof. The majority of the house is prefabricated to reduce construction time on site and limit the impact on the surrounding area.

Picture by Max Hart Nibbrig

In the series ‘new faces’ we were interviewed by Joost Ector for Architectenweb. If you’re wondering what the story is behind our name, have a read!

The construction of House in the Dunes is well under way. In a couple of weeks the cross laminated timber for the walls, floors and roof will arrive and be put in place. The house is scheduled to be completed in May 2021.

The Creative Industries Fund NL has awarded Unknown Architects with a grant for furniture design.

With this grant Unknown Architects will develop three different pieces of furniture. With this, we tap into a new source of income that can increase our financial resilience. Moreover, the development and design of furniture can be a catalyst for our design practice. Ideas that arise in the design of furniture and materials used for this provide the opportunity to test ideas on a small scale that we can then apply in the larger scale of architectural projects.

Incredibly excited to invite the first visitors to the opening of Unfair Temporary Museum this weekend, after two weeks of hard work together with the artists and Unfair. The exhibition runs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday until the 23rd of August. We hope to give you all a tour of our Collage City soon. Get your tickets through the link below!

Photograph by MWA Hart Nibbrig

Together with Sascha Wurm Architektur and Studio BLAD, we participated in the competition for the Education Centre Fruerlund in Flensburg, North-Germany. Our proposal was selected amongst six other design submissions for the second phase of the competition.

Image by Prospettica

Digital magazine Kontextur has published an interview with Unknown Architects. We discussed our developing ideas about architecture and how are practice was founded.

“Good architecture is a self-evident result of a complex puzzle that balances the ambitions, regulations, budget and context in an economic and sustainable way, to realise something distinct and meaningful.”

We are incredibly honoured to have won the Unfair Architect Award 2020 with our design Collage City! Collage City features four very different areas inspired by visionary urban plans of the past. We look forward to developing the design further with Unfair and inviting everybody to the fair in April 2020!

On the winning design the jury stated the following:

‘The jury believes  ‘Collage City’, by designer duo Unknown Architects, to be strong, of museum quality, and to have a good sense of spaciousness. The large variations that are possible in the various individual presentation rooms are extensions of a solid concept and will guarantee a playful walk-through for visitors.’

We’re very excited to announce that we have been nominated for the Unfair Architect Award 2020. We hope to contribute to this progressive biennial art fair, which showcases 40 contemporary artists in the Zuiveringshal on the Westergasterrein.

“The Unfair Architect Award is a biennial visionary architectural prize that is characterised by a dual mission. It celebrates and actively promotes the most promising young architects of today and pushes their career development. Additionally it’s a professional quest to commission the best architect to create the exhibition design for Unfair’s upcoming namesake biennial art fair exhibition in 2020. Winning the award means designing and executing the exhibition design in an enormous industrial hall in the Westergasfabriek and incorporating the 40 individual art presentations that are included in the event. Baring in mind these points of departure, the award calls, for a design that has the unique and autonomous qualities of an artwork in its own right, yet is able to connect all artistic aspects involved. The architect will build their designs as a joint effort with all participating artists.With the no nonsense promise of direct commission and celebration and for the second time the Unfair Architect Award sets out to find the most inspiring design of 2019, bringing Unfair20 to another level.”

We recently received planning permission for a refurbishment and extension of a ground floor apartment in Amsterdam. The project is situated in Plan Zuid by H.P. Berlage. The monochrome extension, consisting of six brick columns topped by a dark red concrete lintel, draws inspiration from the expressive brick architecture of the surroundings. Construction works will commence in two weeks.

We just finished a model of our holiday house in the dunes project. The asymmetrical roof gives the house a different appearance from every angle.

We were commissioned to design the interior of a penthouse on the eleventh floor in the Amsterdam Houthavens. The central feature in the apartment is a twenty-five meter long cabinet that wraps around the core, entrance hall, bathrooms and storage spaces. The cabinet brings a human scale to the tall interior and is further defined by vertical ribs that integrate door handles.

Unknown Architects is commissioned for the refurbishment of a two-storey apartment, ground floor and souterrain, in Amsterdam West. Pictured is one of the plan studies of the new layout: a completely open-plan with living areas defined by freestanding furniture as “columns”.

For the ARC18 Jong Talent Award nomination, we were asked by De Architect to make a 1-minute introduction movie. In the movie our clients do the talking. They share their thoughts and experiences about the process, collaboration and result. Many thanks for their effort. We hope you enjoy this brief insight.

We are excited to be nominated for the ARC18 Jong Talent Award.

The ARC18 Jong Talent Award is yearly awarded to a young designer with an original vision on the discipline and a unique contribution to the profession in the first phase of their architectural career. The winner will be announced on the 22nd of November during a festive award ceremony in the Van Nelle Fabriek in Rotterdam.

We are honoured with the publication of seven of our projects on Italian architectural blog Divisare. The publication includes a thorough documentation of old and new projects, among which the Décor, Jordaan House, Linnaeusparkweg House and the recently completed Corner House in Leiden.

Our recently completed project Corner House is published on Dezeen. Pictured is the living room of the house. The ornamented ceiling was found after taking away a suspended ceiling and was completely restored.

We are commissioned by a family of four to design a holiday home in the dune landscape of one of the Wadden Islands. The site is on the edge of a settlement of holiday homes and overlooks the beautiful dune landscape.

The proposal aims to fit naturally in the landscape by making a compact volume under a single roof. The roof is articulated separately from its base creating a panoramic window that connects the interior of the ground floor, with the living room, kitchen and dining room, to the surrounding landscape. The sloping terrain allows for a lower ground floor level that houses two bedrooms, a bathroom, storage spaces and a small workshop.

We’re currently developing an integrated developed design in collaboration with structural, cost and climate consultants.

We zijn opzoek naar een gemotiveerde en getalenteerde stagiair die de aankomende zes maanden met ons komt werken in Amsterdam. Stuur je portfolio op naar info@unknownarchitects.nl

We’re glad to share our competition proposal for the Veliko Tarnovo Expo Centre. The design aims to both provide in large event hall with the capacity for various events and at the same time position itself in relation to its immediate context. The hall is situated in the heart of the building while the lobby and supporting spaces are wrapped around. The interior of the hall distinguishes itself with a material palette composed of dark wainscoting and red velvet lining; a festive interior. A large window visually connects the interior of this impressive space to the courtyard and also allows for the possibility of natural light into the hall.

Our competition proposal for the Barilla Pavilion on the Pedrignano Campus nearby Parma is online now. The pavilion is composed of the two building types that we find on the Barilla production site: a large horizontal slab, similar to the production buildings, and a slender tower, resembling the silos for the storage of semolina flour. The combination of these two elements makes the pavilion an integral part of Barilla’s Pedrignano Campus. By bringing all the activities of the Barilla Pavilion under a single roof the intriguing story of the production of pasta can be told: from the field to the table.

We’re happy to see our recently completed Linnaeusparkweg House published on De Architect. Pictured is the centrepiece of the project: a semi-circular hall that allows for spontaneous encounters and conversations between the family members and creates specific moments in each of the adjacent bedrooms and bathroom.

Unknown Architects recently got commissioned for the refurbishment of two apartments on the Keizersgracht. Both apartments are situated in a former office building designed by A.J. Van der Steur and R. Petersma. The building was completed in 1939 and transformed into apartments in 1997.

New photography of House Jordaan online by MWA Hart Nibbrig. This includes recent staircase and attic additions by Cato Cano. The project brings two houses in the centre of Amsterdam together by adding a single furniture element that continues throughout the entire building. This element divides and connects spaces that were originally conceived separately. The wall openings have been preserved and take part in the composition. The furniture element is built out of whitewashed birch plywood. This is complemented by an oak floor, brass details and polycarbonate and textile additions.

On 15 December 2017 Unknown Architects will give a lecture titled At Home as part of the Interiors Buildings Cities public lunch lecture series at Delft University of Technology. In this lecture we will share completed work from the last five years, as well as more recent work, including development of projects on site and in the design process.

Unknown Architects has been working on the refurbishment and roof extension of a 1930s apartment in Watergraafsmeer, Amsterdam. The roof extension follows the strict regulations set out in the planning conditions. Its main feature, an exposed timber structure articulates the roof shape. On the floor bellow three bedrooms and a bathroom are connected by a generous semi-circular hallway. This room functions as a place for encounters: a pivotal room connecting spaces both vertically and horizontally. Photograph is taken by MWA Hart Nibbrig.

We’re delighted to announce that Unknown Architects was selected in an open call for young practices from Holland and Belgium to lead a first year master design studio within the chair Interiors Buildings Cities at the Technical University in Delft. It is one of the four studios derived from the common theme of The House in the City, which is further contextualised through the annual theme of the Festive City. The subject of our studio is the Coffee House or Koffiehuis. The studio will dive into the nature of the coffee house of our time, while drawing from its history as an open place for discussion that maximises the interaction between customers, forging a creative and convivial environment.

In collaboration with Suzana Milinovic and Rufus van den Ban (Studio Positif) and João Prates Ruivo (FORA), Keimpke Zigterman has been teaching at the architectural summer school Hello Wood in Hungary.

On a small rise in the Southwest of the Hungarian countryside with a team of 20 international students we have been part of a temporary community of 150 people from 30 different countries. On this site, which can be seen as an archipelago of event structures, we have developed a project that attempts to connect, not only, individual build structures but also the people working on those structures and therefore creates a stronger sense of community.

The team has implemented an intervention strategy that addresses the project site as a whole, including pre-existing and new structures, trees and bushes, topography and soil.

We’re very pleased to invite you to the exhibition “Prelude. Een wevende generatie”. This Wunderkammer portrays a new generation of architects in the Netherlands and Belgium. Prelude will be on display at the M HKA (Antwerp, Belgium) during A Temporary Futures Institute, an exhibition which for a few months will transform the M HKA  into a laboratory or workshop combining two concepts: art and future studies. The exhibition will be running from 16 June 2017 until 17 September 2017.

We’re very pleased to invite you to the opening of the “Maatwerk / Massarbeit” exhibition at 8 pm on the 8th of October. We’re among thirty three Flemish and Dutch offices that have been invited by Marius Grootveld and Jantje Engels, commissioned by the Flemish Architecture Institute, to show their work. The exhibition “Maatwerk / Massarbeit: Custom Made Architecture from Flanders and the Netherlands” will be running from 8 October 2016 until 12 February 2017 in the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt. On the day before the opening a symposium will be held – featuring Willem Jan Neutelings (Neutelings Riedijk Architects), Job Floris (Monadnock) and Inge Vinck (architecten de vylder vinck taillieu) –  on the meaning of “maatwerk” in the work of Flemish and Dutch architects. More info on the work that will be shown soon.

The renovation in Leiden has recently been published on Dezeen: ”Emerging Dutch firm Unknown Architects has renovated a 200-year-old house in Leiden by stripping back its interior, and inserting built-in furniture. Daan Vulkers and Keimpke Zigterman of Unknown Architects were careful to restore some of the house’s character and spatial simplicity by removing non-original partitioned walls and suspended ceilings to create open-plan spaces on all three floors.”

A time lapse movie of the performance by Canja Ensemble in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ edited by Froukje van Wengerden.