Main bus terminal

Amsterdam Centraal Station represents the main railway station in Amsterdam. It is one of the most important railway hubs in the Netherlands. Up to 300,000 passengers pass through here every day, which is ten times the capacity of the original neo-Renaissance building, designed by Petrus J.H. Cuypers at the end of the 19th century. The gradual reconstruction and expansion of the Centraal Station building was undertaken in 1996 by the local firm Benthem Crouwel, which significantly redesigned the entire transport hub, offering today more comfortable and smoother transfers between the railway, buses, metro, trams, ferries, and cycling traffic. Car traffic was diverted into a tunnel in 2013. The bus terminal is covered by a transparent canopy. The airy and open structure does not obstruct views of the IJ River and creates a dignified northern gateway to the city for arriving boats. A part of the comprehensive redevelopment of the transport hub is also the commercial zone IJhall, which was designed by Wiel Arets.
In the northern part of the artificial island Stationseiland, a new bus terminal was added, which can be accessed from the city by a 110-meter long Cuypers passage, used daily by 15,000 cyclists. The rectangular profile of the tunnel with rounded corners is longitudinally divided into two parts: a two-lane asphalt bike path with wire mesh walls and the other half for pedestrians consisting of blue and white cladding. The journey through the underground passage is enhanced by a ceramic mosaic by graphic artist Irma Boom, who based it on 18th-century mosaics by Cornelis Boumeester exhibited at the Rijksmuseum (specifically, the works Rotterdam War Fleet and Herring Fleet from 1725). Towards the water, historical scenes are replaced by pure blue tiles, but since this is handmade production, which the ceramic manufactory Royal Tichelaar Makkum worked on for nearly five years, the slight inaccuracies and unevenness of the blue layer create an impressive decor. The mosaic in the tunnel consists of almost 80,000 tiles (46,000 on the walls and 33,000 on the floor) of traditional dimensions of 13 x 13 cm.