City Hotel Amsterdam, The Host

Abstract

The outcome of constantly striving for economic growth and making a profit has led to a city in which every building is seen as a product. Power, ownership, and mass tourism are taking over the city, exacerbating the housing shortage and making the housing prices rise to an unprecedented height. As a result, inhabitants are being pushed out of the city, while the discussion of housing as a human right is being ignored and wellbeing and equality are undermined. Alongside this housing crisis, tourism has developed into an economy with negative impacts on the city. Being a product for the almost 17 million visitors has been very overwhelming for the only 830.000 inhabitants of Amsterdam, which becomes visible through anti-hotel protests. This raises the question of the right to the city. The main objective of this project is to design a hotel that does not see tourism as a thread for the locals, but instead, as a resource. Considering different ways in which tourism can still take place in harmony with the wellbeing of Amsterdam’s inhabitants, I started to think of an architectural model in which tourists and residents live in the same building, benefitting from each other. The idea is a model where residents have a guest room in their home. The money that the guest room generates enables them to live in the city. The City Hotel will consist of multiple of these units, all housing a guest room. Together, they will form a collective house, sharing multiple facilities like gardens, a big kitchen, a dining room, working spaces and a laundry space. Thereby shifting the almost parasitic relationship between tourists and residents into a symbiotic one.