Room on the Roof at De Bijenkorf led to
both a restaurant in the department store’s
Utrecht location and the renovation of an
entire shop floor in Amsterdam.‘We don’t
look
around a
lot to see
what other
creatives
are doing’
2015
ROOM ON THE ROOF
After working with what they call ‘very
loaded’ spaces, in 2015 Jansen and Dellensen
were handed a confined 4-x-4-m room.
Perched atop Amsterdam’s De Bijenkorf
like Rapunzel’s tower, the small chamber
was earmarked for the department store’s
artist-in-residence project. ‘When De
Bijenkorf first contacted us we thought they
were after a store design,’ says Dellensen.
The department store was in fact planning
to overhaul its entire portfolio, and Room
on the Roof marked the launch of a fresh
strategy. Together with the city’s renowned
Rijksmuseum, the brand was to invite artists,
writers, musicians, architects and designers
to work from Room on the Roof.
i29 created a fairy tale – ‘a tower of
inspiration’ – within an extremely limited
space. ‘We treated the room like a cabinet,’
says Jansen, ‘with an Alice in Wonderland
vibe.’ The project eventually took on a
life of its own – something De Bijenkorf
hadn’t wholly anticipated. When it became
a popular hangout, the department store
responded by organizing tours of the inte-
rior. What’s more, artists not only used it
as a workshop; they reflected on the room
and made work about it.
‘At that point we hadn’t done any
serious retail or hospitality,’ says Jansen. But
Room on the Roof proved to be a test run
for the i29 × De Bijenkorf relationship, lead-
ing to both a restaurant in the Utrecht store
and the renovation of an entire shop floor
in Amsterdam.
66 PORTRAITS