News

• 19/05 2026

  Aurora is finding its proportions again!

  At the corner of Stadhouderskade and Overtoom in Amsterdam, the Aurora (link to the project webpage) building, designed by Piet Zanstra in the 1960s, is being restored to its original state. KAAN Architecten’s renovation unfolds through four careful interventions, each restoring what the building had quietly lost over time.

  The main façade comes first. Slender new frames, wider glazing, and concealed detailing allow the openings to return to Zanstra’s original proportions, while the natural stone once again becomes the dominant presence. More daylight enters the building, and fixed and operable windows are unified into a single expression. At street level, the façade steps back to its original recessed line. The columns are released, allowing the building to rise again as it was originally intended.

  Above, an additional floor settles discreetly behind the main façade. Present yet deferential, its steel frames follow the rhythm already established in the architecture. At the south corner, a new glazed volume extends toward the green courtyard at the heart of the block. A circular staircase rises through the space beneath a skylight that brings daylight deep into the building.

  Inside, the dialogue between old and new remains clear. Raw concrete columns and exposed services are retained, while the new interventions respond more subtly with wooden ceilings, light gray steel, and a calm atmosphere around the central void. The office floors, each nearly 1,000 m², are flexible and filled with daylight, complemented by an active plinth at street level.

  Sustainability underpins the entire transformation. Aurora targets BREEAM Excellent certification and an A++++ energy label, while meeting the CRREM 2040 and Paris Proof ambitions. The building integrates geothermal energy, electric storage systems, 214 solar panels, and green roofs.

  Explore more here. Photography by Magdalena Wierzbicka

• 12/05 2026

  KAAN Architecten and Complex Projects Delft University of Technology present Building Narratives

  KAAN Architecten, in collaboration with Complex Projects TU Delft, presents Building Narratives, published by nai010 publishers. Building Narratives opens a window onto the processes, decisions, and conversations through which buildings come into being. Projects unfold across years, through shifting coalitions of clients, institutions, engineers, and regulators. Designing buildings under these conditions demands maintaining coherence across a process that is always in motion. The book examines how design communication operates within this condition. Narrative is the connective tissue of a project: the structure that keeps collective work legible across disciplines, procurement phases, and changing stakeholders. Architecture is approached as a form of collective intelligence.
  Drawing on three Amsterdam projects by KAAN Architecten, it explores how narrative functions as an operational instrument: a structure that keeps collective work legible across disciplines, procurement phases, and changing stakeholders. Through SPOT’s design as negotiation in a market-driven context, the New Amsterdam Courthouse’s design as integration of competing institutional demands, and Schiphol Terminal’s design as activation within continuous transformation, the book develops a framework grounded in Dutch practice and rooted in the realities of contemporary architectural production.

  Building Narratives team: Manuela Triggianese, Alice Colombo, Stijn Drolenga, Yağız Söylev, and Kees Kaan

• 07/05 2026

  First stone celebration at Twist Tower in Antwerp

  On 7 May, the first stone celebration marked an important milestone in the development of Twist Tower at Het Eilandje in Antwerp. Together with clients, partners, and collaborators, the next step was celebrated towards the realization of a project that contributes to the ongoing transformation of the former harbor district.

  
  Vincent Panhuysen, founding partner at KAAN Architecten: “In the Netherlands, you would not even be allowed onto a construction site without a safety course, hard hat, safety boots, gloves, and protective glasses. Here in Belgium, however, we were lifted 40 meters into the air — seated at a table, equipped with nothing more than a beer tap and our mobile phones — up to the level of the future swimming pool in the Twist Tower. A wonderfully Belgian contrast!

  
  It was an impressive moment. Seeing Antwerp from this height, above the city yet right in the middle of it, in this remarkable position between the old harbor docks and the historic city center… was truly something special. A fascinating perspective on a city in transformation.
  Twist Tower first milestone at a high level, literally and figuratively”.

  
  Discover more about the project here.

• 29/04 2026

  KAAN Architecten appointed lead architect for Schiphol’s long-term investment programme

  Royal Schiphol Group has appointed KAAN Architecten as lead architect for the multi-year investment programme that will reshape the airport over the coming decade. The role carries responsibility for developing and safeguarding the design vision — the framework that gives coherence, continuity, and intelligence to the work of the wider team delivering it. The new role builds on KAAN Architecten’s ongoing relationship with Schiphol, beginning in 2017 in the KLAIR joint venture, with work on the Area South development.

  Schiphol is a one-terminal airport, and that idea is and remains the foundation of everything that follows. It is not a single building, but a system of halls, lounges, piers, baggage systems, security systems, passport controls, and the connections between them — operating as one and reading as one. The investment touches every part of that system, from check-in and security to the piers, and extends across the full landside passenger areas, and parking facilities. The aim is to improve the quality of the airport and to provide more space and comfort for travellers. The task of the lead architect is to extract the DNA of Schiphol — found in its purest form in the original 1960s design — and to use that as the founding part of a narrative under which the work of the next decade, designed by different hands and delivered through separate contracts, comes together as a coherent whole.

  The work will be delivered alongside Paul de Ruiter Architects, LVZJA (Luis Vidal + architects and ZJA I Architects & Engineers), and Beacon (NACO, Netherlands Airport Consultants and Benthem Crouwel Architects) as airport consultant. KAAN Architecten’s responsibility is to hold the whole — to ensure that the parts read as one continuous narrative.

  “Our role as lead architect is to give a decade of work, by several authors, a shared intelligence. A building narrative: an idea drawn from the place itself, that holds across time and across hands.”

  — Kees Kaan, founding partner, KAAN Architecten

  KAAN Architecten congratulates Paul de Ruiter Architects, LVZJA, and Beacon on their appointments, and looks forward to beginning the work together.

  The appointment follows a European tender. Work begins this year and will unfold over the coming decade.