Westbeat, Amsterdam's newly built cultural fray, is perhaps too good.

Art, and certainly avant garde art, thrives on the frayed edges of society. Especially in the second half of the 20th century, industrial heritage and unrenovated urban foam was the place where art could escape the norms of the ruling class. The NDSM wharf in Amsterdam North, Hall 4 or the Submarine Wharf in Rotterdam, Ceramique in Maastricht, Sterrebos in Utrecht and an old toothpaste factory in Amersfoort were places where it happened. Eventually, they all fell prey to urban development and gentrification, precisely because they helped make the no-go areas where they were located flourish. After creatives, property developers inevitably follow.

Now Amsterdam has come up with a very funny solution to that. In Nieuw-West, the area west of the A10 ring road, which for many Amsterdammers is a boundary between civilisation and barbarism, life, and therefore culture, must come. Now there are offices that serve as noise barriers, behind which hides a dreary post-war neighbourhood built for cars. Because the new era is one where it has been discovered that it is better to build cities for people instead of their four-wheelers, a driveway off the horribly efficient Dr Lelylaan has been sacrificed for WestBeat, a pioneering building that is currently supposed to elevate the neighbourhood all by itself.

Multifunctional

Westbeat has won awards and quite rightly so. Rarely has the term 'multifunctional' been so aptly designed in concrete. The ground floor, which curves nicely with the former driveway of the wouldbes motorway next to it, is many metres high and features a vaulted ceiling reminiscent of Romanesque church architecture. It is a temple, with a central passage framed by large, mostly square chapels in which you can do things like have an Alzheimer's association hold office, or the Amsterdam city company ICK dance.

I was at the opening on Saturday 11 September and the impression was overwhelming. But I wouldn't be true to myself if something didn't also niggle. Because, yes, the architect has managed to create a space for creative infill, funded in part by the expensive flats above, but how free are you really in that concrete vault? I thought of the frayed edges to which I have become so attached, the buildings, such as the Verkadefabriek and its surroundings in Den Bosch, where you can tinker a bit because you feel like it. And then I saw the rock-hard concrete of Westbeat and suspected that no drill hammer goes in there without permission being arranged tenfold.

Eternity

Now, all that can be solved by building temporary structures of wood and aerated concrete in the spaces, and that is exactly what happened in Westbeat. Very convenient and plenty of space, you might say, although ICK already seems to have too little room at the moment to accommodate all its office workers in the creative mountain of wood that also serves as a grandstand for lectures and symposia. That temporary nature also has a downside, and that is that the building never really becomes yours. The concrete plays a leading role as a monument of eternity in which the more or less cultural users are merely passers-by.

With an old church or factory hall where the electricity cables and shreds of asbestos are still sticking out of the ceiling, it's different anyway, partly because of the fact that you don't pay the main rent. In Westbeat, everything looks more expensive, and the use looks more fleeting, less from the heart. If things don't work out financially, this could easily be converted into a hotel, as will happen to the equally temporarily renovated Compagnietheater in the capital.

Dance theatre

So maybe we shouldn't judge it until 20 years from now, when the neighbourhood around it has become a cultural hotspot for ordinary and posh Amsterdammers, who get there by bike or public transport. Maybe a lively square will have emerged, where skaters and painters can do their thing. Maybe that restaurant will have become an international draw. Maybe a real dance theatre was even built next to it, because a real theatre is a better confirmation of your love of culture, after all, as a property developer, than something multifunctional.