OKU House + Office is a new mixed-use landmark in Amsterdam's Fashion District. Part of a broader urban plan that nearly triples the area's usable space to 90,000 m², the project layers housing and a renewed workplace onto the existing 1960s ensemble as a "district upon a district," connected by a publicly accessible landscape of gardens, squares and a stepped waterfront.
The project is an integral part of the transformation of Koningin Wilhelminaplein, a long-underutilised area in Amsterdam-West above the A10 ring road and within walking distance of Lelylaan station. What was once dominated by scattered offices and surface parking has evolved into a vibrant urban neighbourhood through a series of carefully sequenced interventions: first two residential towers on the southeast edge, then four slender apartment buildings to their west, and now OKU House + Office at the heart of the site. Together with Berghaus Plaza by MVSA Architects, these projects complete the area's transition from a mono-functional post-war office district into a dense, mixed-use quarter where living, working and public life come together. KCAP's urban plan places five slender volumes across three existing 1960s and 1970s complexes, Berghaus Plaza, The Fashion House and Modrôme, creating roughly 600 new homes in symbiosis with the existing modernist ensemble. Besides the urban plan, KCAP is responsible for the integral landscape design and the architectural design of both OKU House and OKU Office.
OKU House: feet on the ground, head in the clouds — 324 apartments above the Fashion House
OKU House consists of two residential volumes containing 324 rental apartments (112 social rent, 108 mid-range and 104 free-market sector) that extend and reinterpret the existing modernist ensemble. One volume rises directly above the former Fashion House, while the second floats between the surrounding buildings on slender W-columns. This elevated construction strategy opens the ground level to an accessible, green public space that encourages people to gather. The building's striking six-storey elevated volume on the western edge of the site is supported by a series of playfully oriented columns, below which a lush garden serves as a community gathering point.
The façade is composed of glass and warm, bronze-coloured aluminium panels that form a grid slowly opening towards the top, reinforcing what KCAP describes as a building with its feet on the ground and its head in the clouds. Balconies spanning the entire longitudinal façade, the largest about five metres wide, allow residents to enjoy views over the neighbourhood, the waterfront and the surrounding landscape. The porous plinth ensures accessibility to the mixed-use programme at ground level. Apartments on the north side are equipped with sound-insulating ventilation for acoustic comfort. Below the site is a new two-storey parking garage, while extensively glazed lobbies maintain a visible connection to the park and surrounding green areas. Generous indoor bicycle parking completes the programme.
OKU Office: a post-war icon stripped back and repurposed for the future of work
OKU Office occupies the exact 40x40m footprint of the former Fashion House, a building from 1966 originally designed by architects Postma & Postma. The building was stripped back to its original concrete load-bearing structure and reclad with a curtain wall facade that translates the 1966 aesthetic to modern performance standards. The architecture is characterised by the distinctive horizontal façade of the original building, a typical post-war design language. The design recreates the original facade as closely as possible, preserving its concrete facade band, window division and colour scheme, while achieving BREEAM Excellent certification and an energy label of A+++(+).
Inside, the original load-bearing structure is made visible again, grounding the new interior within the rhythm and scale of the original construction. A flexible floor plan accommodates diverse workplace configurations while maximising daylight, anchored by a central atrium that connects all levels and leads up to the rooftop garden. OKU Office is also the first project in the Benelux to incorporate over 45 tonnes of low-carbon Salcos steel, produced in an electric arc furnace achieving an 83% reduction in CO₂ emissions compared to conventional steel production.
Gardens, squares and waterfront: a public landscape that ties it all together
Three distinct communal areas above the half-sunken car parks offer different qualities: a sheltered green garden partially beneath OKU House, a lively urban square between the plinths of OKU House, Fashion House and Berghaus, and a stepped waterfront terrace along the water's edge. A continuous carpet of paving links all ground-floor functions, while ramps, steps and a new pedestrian bridge improve connections to Lelylaan station, a three-minute walk away. Hospitality, a supermarket and other amenities on the square create a lively destination for residents and workers alike.
OKU House + Office demonstrates that urban densification need not erase the past. It can build on it, literally and figuratively, to create a neighbourhood that is denser, greener and more connected than before.
