Kamiel Klaasse - architect principal NL Architects

NL Architects is an Amsterdam based office.
The initial four principals, Pieter Bannenberg, Walter van Dijk, Kamiel Klaasse and Mark Linnemann, officially opened practice in January 1997, but had shared workspace already since the early nineties.
All were educated at Delft University while living in Amsterdam.

NL’s ‘commuting’ office started while carpooling between these cities. In that sense the principals like to think of themselves as auto-didactic; the recurrent fascination with mobility and tarmac perhaps could be traced back to being ‘educated’ on the highway. And it explains the use of the (minimally modified) Dutch bumper sticker as their Logo.
Often their projects focus on ordinary aspects of everyday life, including the unappreciated or negative, that are enhanced or twisted in order to bring to the fore the unexpected potential of the things that surround us.

Some of their projects include Parkhouse/Carstadt (an attempt to integrate auto-mobility and architecture), WOS 8 (a rubber clad Heat Transfer Station in Utrecht), the Mandarina Duck Store in Paris (for/with Droog Design) and the Dutch entry for the Biennale in Venice in 2000 (the so-called NL Lounge).

Recently the BasketBar (a grand café with a basketball court on the roof at the university campus of Utrecht) and the conferencelunchloungelobby for insurance company Interpolis in Tilburg were completed.

At the moment a residence in Korea, a public square in Dordrecht, the redevelopment of the space under elevated highway A 8 in Koog aan de Zaan (including sport facilities, a skate zone, a supermarket and a mini marina), and a soccer club canteen in Utrecht are under construction.
The office is involved in numerous projects in various stages of development, including housing projects in different sizes, cultural facilities and sports buildings.

Mark Linnemann has left NL Architects in the beginning of 2003. The office currently employs an international staff of 12 people.
Their first ‘book’ called .NL 98 99 00 which is available at 010 publishers -for 6 Euro only! By now DD 10, the Remix of Reality -a monograph in Design Document series by Korean Publisher Damdi- is in stores.