building the online home of a museum about the city i live in
The Van Eesteren Museum tells the story of how Amsterdam Nieuw-West was planned and built after the war, following Cornelis van Eesteren’s idea of light, air and space.
It happens to sit right across the street from where I live. Working in a small team of three, with a brand designer and a visual designer, I led the technical design and development of their new website.
challenge
The museum is more than a building with exhibitions. It’s an outdoor museum, a pavilion on the Sloterplas, a furnished 1950s museum home, guided walks, residencies, talks, podcasts, lesson packages and an archive. All of that had to come together in one clear website, for casual visitors and architecture specialists alike. On top of that, the museum runs a full programme that changes constantly. The team behind it needed to manage all of it themselves, in two languages, without the structure falling apart over time.
approach
This was a long project, and that gave us room to do it properly. With just three people, the lines were short: brand, visuals and technology were shaped side by side rather than handed over one after another. My role sat between design and build. I translated ideas into a structure that would actually work, made sure every design decision held up in practice, and kept the technical side of the project moving from first concept to launch.
design
The identity draws on the architecture it represents: clear, open and calm, with plenty of space for images and stories. The website follows the same principle, so a visitor planning a Sunday walk and a researcher digging into the archive both find their way without effort.
build
I built the full site in Webflow, with a CMS designed around how the museum actually works. Exhibitions, events, walks, long reads and educational content each have their own place, but they connect to each other, so one story naturally leads to the next. The site runs in Dutch and English, and ticket sales link straight to the museum’s ticketing platform. Everything was set up so the museum team can keep the programme up to date on their own, week after week.
result
I built the full site in Webflow, with a CMS designed around how the museum actually works. Exhibitions, events, walks, long reads and educational content each have their own place, but they connect to each other, so one story naturally leads to the next. The site runs in Dutch and English, and ticket sales link straight to the museum’s ticketing platform. Everything was set up so the museum team can keep the programme up to date on their own, week after week.
