Yesterday a new remarkable hotel opened doors in the Dutch city of Zaandam. The building embodies anew chapter in modern architecture making a solid design statement: modern design does not necessarily have to look modern and traditional design does not have to look traditional. We would call it neo-neo-traditionalism.

The new Inntel hotel is already the main eye-stopper in the revamped town centre and a building that has set many tongues wagging in the Netherlands. The iconic green wooden houses of the Zaan region were the fount of inspiration for the hotel’s designer, Wilfried van Winden (WAM Architecten, Delft). The structure is a lively stacking of various examples of these traditional houses, ranging from a notary’s residence to a worker’s cottage.

Wilfried van Winden envisages the hotel as a temporary home, alluding to that transience with the stack of houses. Visually speaking the structure is built up from a varied stacking of almost seventy individual little houses, executed in four shades of the traditional green of the Zaan region. The hotel is unique, familiar yet original and idiosyncratic. It is a design that could be realized only in Zaandam but at the same time transcends and reinvigorates local tradition. Interesting is  the fun element in the design. It makes one think and wonder. It adapts to traditional regional style elements while ridiculizing it at the same time.

—On Thursday March 25, the Netherlands Architecture Institute will be hosting a debate on the role of traditionalism in current architecture practice. Volume Editor-in-Chief Arjen Oosterman is one of the seven debaters. More information here (in Dutch).