Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Architects: Eek en Dekkers

Area: 800 m²

Year: 2025

Lead Architects: Iggie Dekkers and Piet Hein Eek

Contractor: Van Schijndel

Structural Consultant: Van Der Laar Adviesbureau

Installation Consultant: Installatie Adviesgroep

Construction: Team 42

Photography: Jannie Guo

Design Features: NYMA Water Tower stands beside the River Waal in Nijmegen. Built in 1929 as part of the former NYMA artificial-silk factory, it remains the most recognisable marker of the industrial complex. As the wider site evolved into a district for making, food and culture, Eek en Dekkers faced more than a conservation exercise: the tower had to support public life again. Its silhouette is retained, but movement, gathering and occupation now become visible parts of the monument.

The transformation begins with subtraction. Later masonry and plaster were removed to reveal the original concrete frame, the brick ring at the top and the prominent NYMA lettering. Repaired historic fabric remains legible beside new timber floors and walls, allowing old and new construction to keep their distinct identities. The tower consequently reads as an inhabited section through time, where scars, repairs and changes in scale are treated as architectural evidence.

The decisive intervention is a narrow vertical strip of glazing running through the tower. It exposes activity across several levels while opening long views toward the Waal, its floodplain and the bridge. Beside it, a straight external steel escape stair is deliberately detached from the historic structure. Rather than decorating the old shell, these two precise additions concentrate daylight, outlook, circulation and public visibility into an immediately readable pair of new elements.

A restaurant, flexible meeting rooms and a panoramic bar are arranged along the vertical route. At the top, the former industrial container becomes a shared room around a circular void, where a partly open floor, rooflight and curved balustrade connect the levels visually. Visitors encounter repaired concrete and brick at close range while the slender glazed opening reframes the river, bridge and former factory grounds. Industrial scale becomes an everyday setting for eating, meeting and looking across Nijmegen.

The project succeeds by making conservation and use reinforce one another. Daylight enters the weighty frame through the glazed incision; after dark, occupation turns the tower into a visible civic beacon. Through a restrained distinction between existing fabric and new construction, Eek en Dekkers preserves NYMA's industrial memory while repositioning the tower as a public link between the makers' district, the river landscape and the city.

Design Team: Eek en Dekkers was founded in 2015 by designer Piet Hein Eek and architect Iggie Dekkers. Based in Eindhoven, the practice brings product, interior and architectural thinking into one working framework, with a particular focus on renovation, transformation and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

Its method develops clear, pragmatic spatial logic from the conditions already present in a site, structure and brief. Users remain central throughout the process, while transparent collaboration with clients, consultants and builders continues from the first initiative to completion. Instead of imposing a fixed style, the studio identifies what can keep working and introduces only the new elements required to support another life.

NYMA Water Tower was led by Iggie Dekkers and Piet Hein Eek, working with Van Der Laar Adviesbureau, Installatie Adviesgroep, Team 42 and contractor Van Schijndel. Named Nijmegen's Monument of the Year in 2025, the project also received the 2025 Dutch Water Tower Award in 2026, recognising the balance it establishes between heritage conservation and renewed public use.