The Other Side of Amsterdam

By Norman Miller, Evening Standard

Last updated at 17:22 03 March 2003

Everyone knows Amsterdam, right? Narrow gabled buildings looming over familiar canals lined with lovely little shops, cosy brown cafes, hookers in the windows, hookahs in the dope dens.

But just a mile or so from Central Station, off the side of almost every tourist map, a new Amsterdam is rising in the city's former eastern docklands.

The best way to get there is to head for Java. This Java, though, is a narrow, mile-long island sitting in the middle of Amsterdam's river estuary, the IJ.

It's a ferry hop past Renzo Piano's startling green-metal NEMO science museum, standing like a proud border post between old and new Amsterdam.

For 20 years, until the late 1990s, Java and the adjacent mainland areas of Sporenburg and Borneo lay derelict, their old port buildings home only to the city's hardier squatters.

Now its tiny criss-cross canals are lined with Amsterdam's hippest houses - tall, thin temples to modernity, flaunting wavy, projecting windows, green copper facades or classic combinations of steel and glass.

Design flourishes adorn the apartment blocks along its central walkway, from brightly coloured Mondrian-style facades to poetry etched into walls like grafitti.

Halfway along the island, though, at Azartplein, the focus shifts from designer des res to designer goodies. Even the island's name changes - from Java to KNSM, in honour of the shipping company whose docks once stood here.

KNSM's central street, KNSM-laan, is Amsterdam's self-styled "design boulevard", its shops selling everything from pared-back modern Dutch furniture (Pilat & Pilat) and 20th century Italian classics (Dominio) to fashion by new Dutch designers.

90 SqM, on Levantplein, specialises in urban fashion by new Dutch designers as well as Etienne Ozeki jeans from Japan and Dr Hauschka cosmetics.

JC Creations on KNSM-laan is a little corset shop that transforms this most starchy of garments with modern, sexy twists.

Artists' studios, meanwhile, cluster along Surinamekade on the northern quayside, taking inspiration from the view across the IJ to North Amsterdam.

The restaurants and cafes along Levantkade, on KSNM's south side, thrum at the weekends with the local creatives and off-island fashion types.

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