Xander Vermeulen Windsant

“DeFlat Kleiburg”
Kleiburg, a over 400m long apartment building with 500+ units, is part of theBijlmermeer, hailed ‘The city of the Future’ when it was built around 1970. But the neighbourhood never deliverd on its utopian ambition. Built within 7 years, and in the end home to 100.000 inhabitants, the neighborhood deteriorated quickly after completion. Following the crash of an ELAL Boing 747 in 1992, a large scale urban transformation project was launched. As a consequence, almost all of the original slab buildings were demolished, and the remaining ones were redeveloped. Key to the approache was to erase or at least radically ‘improve’ the original urban architecture. Kleiburg was the last remaining, still original Bijlmer building, set for demolition. Following protest form local residents, four developers proposed a radical way to save the building. At the lowest point of the financial crisis, this was the starting point of exciting transformation process which saved Kleiburg for the city, and in the end provided over 500 affordable and unique apartments for Amsterdam.

Xander Vermeulen Windsant (born: 1979, Haarlem, NL)

Xander Vermeulen Windsant is principal architect and director of XVW architectuur. Xander studied at Delft University of Technology from 1999 to 2004 and graduated with Honours. After working with one of the leading architecture offices in Amsterdam, he established XVW architectuur in 2010 in order to independently address a new agenda for architecture emerging in the ongoing economic crisis.

Since starting his office he worked on a range of predominantly residential projects, both private and collective. In the collective housing projects collaboration with the future inhabitants is a key aspect of the development process.

In 2017, one of these projects, Kleiburg, was named the winner of the EU prize for Contemporary Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award 2017 (in collaboration with NL Architects).

He has been a visiting critic at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology. He regularly writes for Dutch Online Architecture platform Archined.nl.

EU Mies van der Rohe Award 2017

Courtesy of Marcel van der Burg

Courtesy of Stijn Brakkee

Courtesy of Stijn Poelstra