engineering

Het Strijkijzer

Het Strijkijzer is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Het Strijkijzer rather than just read about it. In short: Het Strijkijzer (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈstrɛikɛizər], The Flatiron) is a residential and office skyscraper in The Hague, Netherlands. It is 132 metres (433 ft) with 43 floors, making it the city's fourth tallest building.

Key takeaways

Het Strijkijzer belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Het Strijkijzer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Het Strijkijzer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Het Strijkijzer (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈstrɛikɛizər], The Flatiron) is a residential and office skyscraper in The Hague, Netherlands. It is 132 metres (433 ft) with 43 floors, making it the city's fourth tallest building. In 2007 the building was awarded the Hague New City Prize and the international Emporis Skyscraper Award, with Emporis citing "its elegant reinterpretation of classic high-rise architecture, its contextual approach to a limited site, and its efficient program for accommodating new entrants to the housing market". Inspired by the Flatiron Building in New York City, its name is the Dutch word for an iron. The building contains 300 studio flats for students and first-time property owners, and 51 luxury flats, accessible by a separate lift. There are also furnished flats for rental on a weekly or monthly basis. Below is space for catering, a laundromat, ironing facilities and office space. Since 2011, there is a panoramic terrace on the 42nd floor, which is accessible from the ground floor via a dedicated lift. From the terrace, one can see the ships on the North Sea.

Construction

Construction of Het Strijkijzer started in 2005. The construction site was a piece of land, measuring only 30 by 35 m (98 by 115 ft), on the edge of the Rijswijkseplein, an important infrastructural crossroad of The Hague, surrounded by heavy car and tram traffic. The contractor, Boele & van Eesteren, thus had to pay close attention to the safety aspect and to the minimising of noise and other nuisance. The lower floors were made of concrete poured on-site and the upper floors were completely constructed with precast concrete. Construction progressed with an average of two floors per week. Het Strijkijzer was topped off in March 2007. In June 2007 the building was capped with a crown which was mentioned in the local news shortly after installation because in high winds it emitted a high-pitched whistling sound. Hoftoren and Prinsenhof Tower in The Hague have also had such problems because of the nature of their tops. In the short term, the problem has been alleviated by affixing 380 plywood sheets to the crown. A visually more pleasing, permanent solution was implemented in early 2010 by replacing the plywood with 454 transparent lexan panels. Het Strijkijzer is a project of Vestia, a Dutch residential corporation which is working together with De Compaan to employ mentally handicapped people in various capacities in laundry, ironing and catering.

Design The ground plan of Het Strijkijzer has an L-shape, with the slightly longer wing pointing north, and the shorter wing pointing east, the corner between them pointing south-west, in the direction of the Hollands Spoor railway station. The corners of the triangle are rounded, and each has its own lobby, pair of lifts, and staircase. The southern entrance, at the end of the longer wing, is for the residents of the studio flats. The western entrance, at the end of the shorter wing, is for the residents of the luxury flats, and the third entrance is for visitors of the panoramic terrace; the lifts go straight from the lobby to the 42nd floor. Both at the base of the building and at six floors higher up, the two wings are connected, creating a full triangle. On the small north-eastern side of these six floors, a display was attached in 2011. Measuring 19x14 metres (62x46 feet), this LED display features Twitter messages, photos of local events, advertisements and, regularly, the time.

Floors 42-43: Panoramic terrace Floors 32-40: four luxury flats per floor; two in the longer wing, one in the corner and one in the shorter wing Floors 5-29: twelve studio flats per floor; seven in the longer wing, one in the corner and four in the shorter wing

Innovative ideas Since there was no room for 351 mailboxes, a kind of paternoster system was designed for mail in consultation with the nation postal service TNT Post; in the lobby of the building, a resident can have his or her box appear by keying in a code. Residents also receive a keycard which gives them access to their apartment and storage.

Gallery

References

External links

(in English) Het Strijkijzer official site

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Het Strijkijzer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Het Strijkijzer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Het Strijkijzer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Het Strijkijzer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Het Strijkijzer

In research: Het Strijkijzer appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Het Strijkijzer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Het Strijkijzer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2007 establishments in the Netherlands, 21st-century architecture in the Netherlands, Buildings and structures completed in 2007, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Het Strijkijzer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Het Strijkijzer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Het Strijkijzer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Het Strijkijzer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Het Strijkijzer in simple terms?

Why does Het Strijkijzer matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Het Strijkijzer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Het Strijkijzer.