Amsterdam under construction

At Het Stenen Hoofd the Openlucht Atelier presents the work of the artists Hans de Tweede and Tycho about Amsterdam issues such as housing crisis and gentrification. The city is changing fast, becoming year by year more international while at the same time the prices of houses rise and the tourists inundate the city centre. All these changes are witnessed every day by the residents, who feel as if the city is not theirs anymore but has been appropriated by tourists, expats and big corporations. The character of Amsterdam is being lost and the ones who suffer the most are Amsterdammers themselves, who are forced to look at their city being sold away.

In the exhibition at Het Stenen Hoofd, the two artists give voice to the issues the city is experiencing through billboard posters on which written sentences express the sad reality of the changing capital and its transformation. The topics discussed on the billboards are tourism, housing crisis and gentrification. Parts of the city are now being rebuilt, adding new constructions to old neighbourhoods which transform them, as is the case of the banks of the IJ in Amsterdam Noord, where new skyscrapers are being constructed which are changing the face of the area. The exhibition looks over this part of the city, which can now be defined as gentrified.
Other parts of the city which are rapidly changing have been so because of mass tourism, which is ruining neighbourhoods in the city centre, where today you can only find monocultural shops built only for tourists.

Because of the many issues the city is facing and the prices of the houses which keep going up, residents have decided to move away and go live in the city suburbs where houses are cheaper. Amsterdam is then becoming only a city for the people who can afford to pay very expensive rents and keep up with the costs of living. Many students who would like to move to the city are often forced to still live with their parents because of the high rent and the difficulty in finding a room due to the high demand. The students who can afford to live in the city are thus often the ones who have rich parents, consequently creating clusters of rich people living in the centre of the city which is day by day becoming more and more a city for the elite.

Issues such as housing crisis, gentrification and mass tourism then contribute to the transformation of the city, consequently changing its character. Creating winners and losers, the change that Amsterdam is experiencing is affecting its very heart and many worry that in a few years it won’t be the same anymore.