Dutch design

I am critical of many things over here, but not the architecture -- never the architecture. This city is a joy to walk around, with so many different varieties of design, all happily inhabiting the same street or neighbourhood. How is it that a country so notably lacking in taste when it comes to clothing can create such outstanding buildings? A few examples:

Wisteria on the Keizersgracht. The shutters on the building add about 10,000 euros to the asking price for each apartment.



The garden house behind Keizersgracht 62-64, open to the public today as part of the grachten open gardens weekend. It's now a meeting room for the small companies that are part of the EBC, but can you imagine it being a dining room on long summer evenings, doors open to the walled garden, candlelight everywhere?



Da Kas Restaurant, Amsterdam. This was a 1926 municipal greenhouse, but was saved from demolition and converted into a rather good restaurant with its own organic nursery. And the lighting inside as the night drew in was lovely, too.





A modern apartment block near to my office. It's the addition of colored panels and a Gehry-esque metal-scale clad tower that transform it from a bland block into something more appealing.



Beautiful buildings from different centuries; Dutch design at its best. Now if they could only do something about the graffiti ...