Borneo-Sporenburg: the self-built quayside
A red wave of a bridge, sixty houses each designed by their owner, and a whale on the water. Walked and written by the editor.

1. Sporenburg pier
Start on the Sporenburg side, where West 8's plan for the whole district reads clearest: a low carpet of houses packed tight, broken only by a few tall blocks. Walk toward the red bridge; you'll see it long before you reach it.

2. The Python Bridge
Adriaan Geuze's *Pythonbrug* — a steel wave that humps up over the *Spoorwegbassin* and down again, ninety metres of pure show, for pedestrians only. Cross it slowly; it won an international footbridge prize in 2002 and it's obvious why from the top of the curve.

3. Scheepstimmermanstraat
Sixty houses on Borneo-eiland's south quay, each one designed by the family that lives in it — sixty different answers to the same narrow plot. Walk the full street and read the façades; no two solve the canal, the light and the front door the same way.

4. Borneo-eiland quaysides
Loop the island's water edges, where the houses come right down to the canal with their own front-door moorings. This is the experiment's quiet half — less spectacle than the bridge, more the point.

5. The Whale (De Walvis)
Frits van Dongen's great block on Sporenburg, its roofline and base both raked so it seems to surface from the water — hence the name. One of the three tall 'meteorites' that hold the low district down. Best seen from across the basin.

6. Rietlandpark
The walk lands at the tram stop on the district's western edge, with the park and the IJ-tram both here. Sit a minute before you go; you've just walked the most thought-about housing in the city.

Borneo-Sporenburg: the self-built quayside