Officially called Nachteiland – meaning “night island” in Dutch, in reference to the work of choreographer Rudi van Dantzig after whom the neighbourhood’s main street is named – the building is designed for the real estate partnership of LOCUS Real Estate Development and Miss Clark. Located at the heart of the Sluisbuurt, between Rudi van Dantzigstraat and a small pocket of greenery, the project’s diverse range of apartments and retail is expressed in its visual appearance: the shape of the building is composed of a series of blocks which act as like a collection of different neighbourhoods. These blocks are positioned side-by-side at ground level to form the plinth, and vertically to form the tower above.

Along Rudi van Dantzigstraat, the plinth is constructed out of blocks of three to six storeys, echoing the sizes of neighbouring buildings and hosting a series of double-height spaces for shops and cafés. On the side of the pocket park, the plinth is broken up even further to create a series of townhouses, which are punctuated in the middle by a communal greenhouse and a broad green staircase that extends the greenery upwards to a first-floor courtyard in the heart of the plot.

The design references the neighbourhood’s location with complementary east and west façades. Seen from the east, with central Amsterdam as the backdrop, the building is relatively urban and formal in appearance; from the west, the building is more segmented and adorned with greenery, hinting at the smaller, low-rise homes and the green fields that lie beyond, to the northeast of Amsterdam.