Project GEUS

GEUS reimagines the residential high-rise as a vertical neighborhood set within a park. Situated in Amsterdam West amid the verdant “Bakema Park,” this design for a 122-unit apartment tower is conceived as a restrained yet recognizable addition to the landscape. An eight-meter-tall wooden plinth forms the building’s base, anchoring it in the green surroundings. This generous plinth embeds the tower into the park by housing a grand entrance lobby and spaces for community activities, all opening directly onto a communal garden. In this way, the ground level of GEUS becomes an extension of the park itself, inviting neighbors and residents to mingle.

Above the base, the tower introduces a unique, compact corridor system that functions like an interior street looping through each floor. This open corridor brings light and views deep into the building and creates a residence that “lives” on all sides, with front doors and windows facing multiple directions. The design takes inspiration from architect Jaap Bakema’s principle of “living under the trees, between the trees and above the trees.” Accordingly, GEUS offers a rich variety of housing types, each defined by its elevation and orientation within the tower. Factors like sunlight, views, and outdoor space were guiding design principles – lower levels engage closely with the park’s tree canopy and activity at ground level, while higher apartments enjoy broader vistas and more sky, yet all share a strong connection to the greenery.

These design ideas translate directly into GEUS’s facades. Window frames project outward sharply from the facade, creating bay-window lookouts for each home and lending the tower a lively, ever-changing appearance as the sun moves. The inviting transparency of floor-to-ceiling glass is balanced with carefully placed opaque panels: finely textured concrete on the lower floors gives way to smoothly polished concrete towards the top, creating a subtle gradient that reduces the building’s visual mass. A strong horizontal rhythm of the floor slabs is interwoven with vertical elements that become more pronounced from the plinth up to the crown, giving the tower a dynamic yet coherent identity.

Sustainable features are seamlessly integrated. Characteristic brise-soleil fins wrap the facade, cutting off harsh summer sun and doubling as an expansive 2,500 m² surface of photovoltaic panels oriented at the optimal angle for energy generation. The tower’s flexible structural grid allows apartment layouts to change over time, so the building can accommodate successive generations of residents or shifts in living patterns. Even local biodiversity is supported: the facade and roof include nesting boxes at various heights, offering shelter to birds, bats, and butterflies and making GEUS not just a home for people, but for urban wildlife as well.