The Looking Glass — P.C. Hooftstraat 138

About this place

Completed in 2019, the P.C. Hooftstraat 138 facade intervention sits on one of Amsterdam's premier luxury retail streets, immediately adjacent to the Vondelpark and the Rijksmuseum quarter. UNStudio designed three projecting curved glass bays occupying the full height of the building's street elevation, a project named 'The Looking Glass'. The design concept draws from the movement and translucency of draped fabric: curved and flat glass panes are joined using structural silicone with stainless steel covers, creating a seamless undulating surface that bows outward from the facade plane. At street level the glass opens wide to maximise retail presence and visibility; upper sections taper and curve inward, producing a sculptural quality that reads as much as an architectural installation as a commercial frontage. The project maintains the traditional tripartite vertical bay rhythm of Amsterdam townhouses but abstracts it entirely through material and geometry. The result is unusual for a facade refurbishment — a genuinely tectonic statement inserted into one of the most commercially saturated streetscapes in the Netherlands, demonstrating how building skin can carry architectural ambition at retail scale.