The striking cobalt blue house is situated in Ijburg, an artificially built island — constructed from scratch, designed to provide 18,000 dwellings for 45,000 residents. The whole residential island however has been devised on the drawing board, leaving not one millimetre left to chance. The urban planning for Ijburg is therefore rigorously regulated. This strictly managed planning methodology obstructs any unpredictable yet vital emergence of a public dimension and personal and cultural histories within it. The Blue House was thus proposed as a house to provide a creative living environment, a space for the unplanned, a place open for experimental urban interventions that research and help to evolve new local social histories for near and long-term furture of the island. Artists, architects, thinkers and writers of different geographies and cultural backgrounds are invited to live and work in the house for self-determined periods of time. For temporary Blue House residents and visitors or permanent Ijburg inhabitants, the Blue House is to be used as a shared housing association to bear new cultural histories and futures of Ijburg.

Listen to radio-maker Jo van der Spek talking about the Blue House together with radio guests. Fragment taken from an M2M radio session, 17 October 2007. M2M is aired every Friday 19 - 22h from the Blue House. Jo van der Spek talking about the Blue House