Urban eco-cafe in Amsterdam Noord readied

By Maxime Zech on May 27, 2014 - 15:46
Café de Ceuvel
. (Source: Facebook/CeuvelCafé)

A new café is in the final stages of being built, and is almost ready for business. De Ceuvel in Amsterdam-North just needs to gather a little more money before it hopes to be the first fully-sustainable café, Het Parool. 

"We are going to do everything sustainably, really everything", exclaimed Toon Maassen 26 days before opening. The structure of the building is being constructed using repurposed wood from various local sources.

The café is being built-up with 80-year old bollards from the harbor of Amsterdam. The front and back are made of an old lifeguard post from Scheveningen. Solar panels will line the roof. Cooking will be done with bio gas, produced locally. Water-less urinals are also in the works.

On a plot in-between the Papaverweg and the water behind the NH Hotel on the old wharf on the Buikslotersham, Amsterdam will soon have its first fully-eco-friendly café.

The plan for Café de Ceuvel was special to begin with. The developing team of Jeroen Apers, Steven Delva, Sascha Glasl, Marjolein Smeele and Wouter Valkenier won a competition last year that was organized by the Amsterdam borough Noord.

The competition was looking for a good plan to do something good with the area that used to be the old shipping wharf De Ceuvel-Volharding. The ground here is deeply polluted. The team found a simple solution. The plan was to place house boats there, there are already 16, bound together by a long wooden jetty that runs in-between the boats.

At the head of the terrain, Café de Ceuvel is situated. The owners of the Café, Esmee Jiskoot (22), Toon Maassen (22), Bart van Overbeek (26), and Joey Hodde (22) managed to motivate a team of volunteers to help construction. The café will eventually be made from a boat with a podium for movies, theater and music.

The idea still needs €20,000 to be completed. The entrepreneurs are planning to raise this money the modern way, through crowd-funding. In exchange for an amount, donors get a biological cotton bag or a dinner paid once the café is opened. The planned grand opening date is the 21st of June. Maassen is very excited. "It's going to be an enormously cool place."

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