The basement will house SMART’s cinemas, due to open Autumn 2005, which will present a program of Art House Cinema and experimental film and video. The cinemas will also be interconnected to the exhibition activities, located on the ground floor. With 6 spaces dedicated to exhibitions, screening and performance programs, there will also be a SMART book-store and a new cafe/restaurant.

With the return of the sorely-missed cafe/restaurant, SMART once again acknowledges ‘the importance of a meeting place where both artists and the public can intermingle in a relaxed and inspiring setting’. The cafe/restaurant will also enjoy an adjoining outside terrace, plus a unique 50 meter jetty for those patrons arriving via the canal (surprisingly it’s still rare to find cafes with large jetties here in Amsterdam – even though lots of people have boats). The plan is to annually invite international artists to redesign the cafe/restaurant. Upstairs, nestled next to the studios and double-height exhibition spaces (including a perfectly dimensioned white cube), will be the members club, reserved for the artistic community and hosting an exclusive calender of events.

All in all, the future looks intensely exciting for this noble building and the people who have been tirelessly working to build SMART project space into the vital cultural organization it has become. With the first exhibition spaces revealed to the public back in September with the hugely successful ADAM project, more spaces are in the pipeline to open over the next few months. But don’t expect big fanfares, this will be a quiet, natural expansion into the rest of a building that was just waiting for all this to happen…

SMART Project Space
Address: 101-111 Arie Biemondstraat, NL 1054 Amsterdam
Tel: +31 (0)20 427 5951
info@smartprojectspace.net
https://www.smartprojectspace.net