What a gas

Gas leak
In Westergasfabriek park, soft landscaping winds its way around a gas holder converted to an events hall, two circular ponds in the basements of two other gas holders and, beyond these, a cultural and local government complex in historic buildings

In west Amsterdam lies one of Europe's most extensive collections of industrial heritage. Westergasfabriek was built as Amsterdam's main gasworks between 1883 and 1903 by the British Imperial Continental Gas Association. But in 1991, long after coal gas was replaced by natural gas, the 14 ha site was handed over to the municipal authority. Apart from three huge cylindrical gas holders, what the Westerpark district council inherited was a complex of hefty brick buildings in a distinguished industrial-gothic style that had just been listed as of historic and architectural interest.

The obvious solution would have been to sell off the complex for conversion into luxury housing. The main obstacle was extensive contamination of coal tar. As a result, regeneration has taken place in fits and starts over 15 years with more still to come. For long periods of that time, there was no clear vision or sense of direction. Even so, the end result is a vibrant cultural complex in which converted historic buildings and an exhilarating new park work together in symbiosis. Far from being gated and exclusive, the complex has an open, accessible feel.

The common thread running through the protracted regeneration of Westergasfabriek is the informal temporary uses to which the buildings and open spaces were put while grand regeneration plans were drawn up and deliberated on. In the end, these informal cultural, leisure and retail uses have established themselves as permanent uses with enough critical mass to attract visitors from near and far.

If there is a vision that binds the scheme together, it is that of landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle, who now runs her practice, Gustafson Porter, in London. In 1997, Gustafson, together with Francine Houben, director of Dutch architect Meccanoo, won an international design competition with an overall theme of transition, which recognised and celebrated the multifarious environmental, social and organisational potentials of the site.

The grass is greener
One of the original gas holders has been converted into an inspiring events hall

The many uses to which the site is put and the transition underlying Gustafson-Houben's physical layout both become clear when visiting the site. Crossing the canal from the city on to the site, you find yourself in the midst of the industrial building complex.

On one side stretches a grand neo-renaissance terrace with stone trim that had been built as the gas works offices and has been suitably converted into the town hall of the newly formed Westerpark council.

On the other side lies a collection of large robust brick halls encircled by an outer ring of lower blocks. These now serve variously as an exhibition hall, art gallery, restaurant-cum-dance-club, arts cinema, designer shops and a small cafe. All of them have been set up by the people who run them rather than being part of large chains.

Walk beyond the building complex and you pass through a strip of densely planted bushes and perennials. You then come out on to a wide stretch of grass, with a shallow paved paddling pool beyond. In a congested city, this is a fine expanse of space, greenery and fresh air, and serves for sports activities too. And on festive occasions, it serves a crowd-pulling third function. The pool is drained to make way for a live band and the lawn can accommodate a large informal audience.

Gustafson celebrated the rich mix of civic, social, commercial, cultural, recreational and ecological
uses on the site

Now follow the pool to the left and it narrows down to a channel, from where the water passes through a copse of aquatic trees and gushes over a weir. It then transforms into a woodland stream winding through bushes and mature trees and under narrow hump-backed pedestrian and cycle bridges.

Venture beyond the trees and you can reach a series of four rectangular polders that long ago had been reclaimed from the sea. The polders are still bounded by their original narrow water channels, but after lying fallow for many years, they have now found a new lease of life as a nature reserve.

If we had taken the route parallel to the canal alongside the retained buildings, we would have come to a pair of substantial managers' houses now converted to a children's museum and centre. Beyond that rises the unmistakeable massive drum of a former gas holder, with brick arches below and steel plate above. This has been converted to enclose a cavernous hall beneath a star-shaped roof of cast-iron ribs.

It has staged several major concerts, an opera and even acts by the Canadian circus Cirque du Soleil.

To one side of the concert-hall gas holder lie two interconnected round ponds partly inhabited by rushes and irises. Both of them are pure circles contained within solid brick retaining walls and together have the presence of a grand Baroque water garden. They are in reality the utilitarian footings of two demolished gas holders.

A shallow pond can be drained to stage concerts, with the green taking up the spectators

Finally, at the western end of the site, a cluster of undistinguished 1960s buildings has recently been demolished and construction is about to start on a group of 3000 m² creative arts buildings.

On special occasions, the whole park and buildings come together in extravaganzas, which started as early as 1993 with the Holland Festival and in more recent years has included the Midsummer Nights Festival and the Yule Festival, all of which drew thousands of spectators.

In short, this is a park with a cultural rather than a unifying landscape theme. Gustafson recognised "a conglomeration of uses - civic, social, commercial, cultural, recreational and ecological" that was already taking place on the site. To celebrate this rich mix, she traced various transitional routes through the site which she summarised in three brief verbal and otherwise enigmatic sequences printed at the foot of her competition design drawing. Her first sequence is the transition from "city" to "village", then through "landscape" to "nature". The second sequence is from "politics" (as in town hall) through "recreation" to "art". And the third is from "order" to "freedom".

This park would never have come into being without the sterling efforts of a large group of residents
Evert Verhagen, Westerpark council

How, then, did this rich mix manage to come together in Amsterdam if there was no guiding vision from the start? The council's first step was to invite public ideas for new uses in 1991 and it received 334 submissions. The council chose a music centre, whereas local residents voted for a richer mix of mainly community uses. But delays in winning government approvals forced the council to let out the buildings to various cultural institutions for temporary uses. And in the end, it was the temporary cultural uses that took over as permanent occupants.

In 1996, the council set up a more formal design competition, adopted Gustafson-Houben's design and eventually went on to carry out site remediation and lay out the park. Finally, in 2000, it sold off the buildings to a development company to refurbish the buildings one by one, though within the established uses and using government grants.

A Baroque aquatic garden originated as the basements to two gas holders

In total, the council spent £16m on the land remediation and the park. It sold the buildings and a corner of the park for just £2.8m, but in return the developer received a £1.7m government grant to restore the listed buildings.

But in the end, it was grassroots community spirit that pushed through the whole regeneration project. As the council's project manager, Evert Verhagen, wrote in 2003: "You cannot have a city without a park, and you cannot have a park without a city. This park would never have come into being at all without the sterling efforts of a large group of local residents who, with admirable tenacity, strove for many years to persuade the powers that be of the merits of their ideas."

However, one fundamental question remains: whatever happened to all the contaminated soil that was required by planning permission to be retained on the site? Based on Arup's advice on land reclamation, much of it was formed into the landscaped mounds on the site, along with a higher elongated mound shielding the park from the mainline railway tracks running alongside it. And the most severely contaminated soil of all was conveniently disposed of in the two 7 m deep pits of the demolished gas holders. This raised the base of the pits by 4 m, and was elegantly capped by the two circular ponds with their aquatic planting.

In turning contamination and dereliction into landscaped parkland and a cultural mecca, Westergasfabriek has eventually emerged as an international model of industrial regeneration.

A picturesque woodland park leads on from the formal paved pool and lawn