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Stipo projects
The Cultural Coalition for the Amsterdam Olympic Area

The Cultural Coalition for the Amsterdam Olympic Area

Combining sports and culture

21-07-2008 Stipo: Hans Karssenberg

The beautifully renovated 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Stadium is the only of two pre-war Olympic Stadium that still exists in the world.

It is now the catalyst for all kinds of new activities, related with sports and the Olympic Spirit.

It houses the Johan Cruyff Foundation, the Amsterdam Marathon and many other sports-related foundations and events.

The district of Amsterdam Oud Zuid is building the Cultural Coalition for the Amsterdam Olympic Area, in close cooperation with many residents, institutions like the Olympic Stadium and the Rietveld Academy, urban networks and developers.


The Olympic Spirit has always combined sports and culture. The ancient greeks held games not only between athletes, but also between artists and philosophers.

 

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, for instance architecture was an Olympic discipline. Philosopher Foucault sees sports and culture as the two last truly free domains of society.

 

Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam foto: willem de graaf

Amsterdam Oud Zuid is trying to build all the different initiatives that already exist separately into the new Cultural Coalition for the Olympic Area. This is an area development corporation for branding and activity programmes, incorporating residents, institutions, businesses, developers and urban and national networks. The aim of the corporation is to create new cross-overs, for instance between sports and culture (among others with Stadium and Rietveld Academy), sports and entrepreneurship, sports and heritage, etc.

 

foto: arie verschuren
This way, the area is being developed in a very natural and bottom-up way as a unique new part of the Creative City of Amsterdam. The software development of the Cultural Coalition takes place in exchange with the hardware development of the new Stadionplein, a huge new recreational square with high design quality that will be added to the city. It will be one of the podiums for the activities of the Cultural Coalition.

 

One example: for the Chinese, the number 8 is a lucky and somewhat holy number. The Bejing Olympics will be opened on 8 August 2008, 8 past 8 local time. The organisation thought back where the Olympics took place, 80 years before. That was in 1928, in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is now planning to send its greetings to Bejing, of course 8 days before opening the Games there, by having the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra perform in the Olympic Stadium, combined with a Chinese culture programme. The area will be presented to the platform of the world this way.

 

On the 11th Annual Quality Streetscapes Conference in London, 3 May 2006, Hans Karssenberg, projectmanager for both the new Stadion square and the Cultural Coalition, was invited to speak about these topics.

 

Marathon

 

Also read the interview with Charles Landry.