When I hear the word “hotel” I think of a tan colored, box-shaped building with white walls and ugly curtains & bed sheets. A place that does it’s job. I can sleep there, and I can leave. The Inntel Hotel Zaandam located in the Netherlands (Zaandam, near Amsterdam) is a very different kind of hotel. 

It was designed by Wam architecten, an independent bureau established by architect Wilfried van Winden in 2009. The Inntel Hotel Zaandam is a marvelously quirky building that looks like stacked green, blue, and orange cottage houses that go 12 stories high. Wilfried van Winden swears that the point of the building was not to shock, but that “this is, of course, an outspoken building…it makes a big statement, sure, but the building is not an imposition – it belongs here.” According to Winden, the facades of the hotel were based on traditional Zaanstad houses. His favorite bit of the building is the blue part up at the top (also known as the bridal suite) which is a re-creation of a blue house in a work by Claude Monet (which he painted during a trip to Zaandam.) The Netherlands, it seems, said no thank you to the post-modern architecture movement. Instead, wonderful buildings like the Hotel Zaandam were created and celebrated. 

The Monet painting mentioned: 

Something I find very interesting that not a lot of people talk about is the INSIDE of the hotel. The interior decorations play on the rich history of the Zaan area, which is nice, but personally…I wouldn’t want to get stuck in the room with the giant laughing baby mural. 

 

– LB