A warehouse on the Ellermanstraat in Zuidoost holds 37 places to sleep, and every one of them was built by the man who runs it. Willem Megens, 44, opened his first rooms in the spring of 2020 and finished the last of them this winter.
From the street the building gives nothing away: a square industrial shed on an industrial estate. Inside, the floor is laid with artificial grass, there are benches, and signs point the way to the showers and toilets.
Games, badminton rackets and boules sit in one corner.
The advantage of a roof shows in bad weather and in good weather alike. Air conditioning keeps the hall cool when the city outside is baking.
Thirty-seven rooms, no two the same
Some of the rooms are caravans Megens rebuilt. Others are cabins bought as kits and assembled on site.
A few are round, having started life as saunas before the fittings came out and a bed went in.
Megens is from Brabant and had run a series of jobs and small businesses before this one. He describes the idea as the answer to a question he set himself: what he would do if money were no longer the reason for working.
The answer was a large shed and something to build in it.
He looked at comparable places in Germany and New York before starting. The German version, by his account, is a shed and little else, with none of the decoration.
The New York one is closer to an indoor park for campervans.
Lockdown timing, and the guests who came anyway
The lease was signed three weeks before the first coronavirus lockdown. For a long stretch afterwards the building could open only for a few weeks each summer.
Online reviews eventually did the work of drawing people in.
Most guests sleep, eat breakfast and leave. The metro reaches the centre quickly and bicycles are easy to rent.
In summer around 80% of guests come from abroad, and a steady share of them are concertgoers looking for a bed after a night at the Johan Cruijff ArenA, the Ziggo Dome or AFAS Live. Megens says he can tell which act is in town from who is sleeping in his hall.
What it is not
People occasionally arrive with their own tent or caravan, which is not what the place is for. Barbecues are not allowed and there is nowhere to swim.
Quiet hours begin at 23:00 and the lights across the building are dimmed at sunset. Anyone still awake can use a basement lounge with sofas and a table football, next to the shared showers and toilets.
Children are welcome from the age of seven. Somebody is on site around the clock as a point of contact and in case anything goes wrong.
Groups sometimes take the whole building for a weekend, which makes the quiet hours easier to relax.
What happens next
With the building full, Megens says he is taking a quieter year and handing more of the day-to-day running to staff. He has considered opening the same thing in other cities and is not keen.
It would mean another five or six years of the same work, and he would rather find a different kind of challenge.
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