Revolving restaurant

360° Restaurant Moon + a tour of Amsterdam

Everyone who lives in Amsterdam is familiar with the Shell Tower. It’s one of the city’s best-known icons. After being empty for some time, the multifunctional A’DAM tower was ‘reborn’ following a large-scale renovation. A’DAM stands for ‘Amsterdam Dance and Music’. A mix of creative companies in the music industry, cafés, restaurants, a hotel, a viewing point, and Restaurant Moon have now put the tower on the international map.

“npk design and Lingotto share an important attribute: we’re always intensely involved in projects and we’re very good at finding innovative solutions. To make the project a success, we needed to think outside the box.”

Eric-Jan de Rooij
Lingotto

Everyone who lives in Amsterdam is familiar with the Shell Tower. It’s one of the city’s best-known icons. After being empty for some time, the multifunctional A’DAM tower was ‘reborn’ following a large-scale renovation. A’DAM stands for ‘Amsterdam Dance and Music’. A mix of creative companies in the music industry, cafés, restaurants, a hotel, a viewing point, and Restaurant Moon have now put the tower on the international map.

Modulair system

We used product engineering principles to tackle the problem. We divided both the revolving, ring-shaped frame that bears the restaurant floor and the permanent support structure into segments. This created a modular system, which is also very affordable thanks to its repetitive character.
It’s a familiar approach for our experienced engineers: “Although this project stands out from the rest of our engineering portfolio, in reality only the scale level is bigger than what we’re used to,” reveals engineer Ingmar Maurice. Together with trusted partner VDL, we worked out the idea in detail and then produced and installed it in the tower.

The result is amazing. It feels as if the city is spread out at your feet.

The restaurant is around 70 metres above the city, which is the perfect height from which to view Amsterdam in all its glory. Together with the dynamic IJ river, which flows around the tower, it’s a wonderful calling card for our capital city.