De Balie
De Balie is housed in a former Amsterdam Cantonal Court building, and its origin story is tightly bound to activism for cultural reuse rather than demolition. When the 19th-century courthouse was threatened in the late 1970s to make way for an eight-storey Bouweshotel, Amsterdammers—including politician Hedy d’Ancona and artist Wim T. Schippers—launched the campaign “Bouw es wat anders.” The city council was persuaded, and the building found a new destination in 1982 as an art center. Work intensified later: in the mid-1980s, Rottenberg and colleagues oversaw a conversion into a theatre complex, with architect Rogier Weijand designing the Art Deco Grand Café. The wider De Balie organization now produces independent journalistic programming at the intersection of art, culture, and politics, with Yoeri Albrecht as general and artistic director and about 400 live events each year. …
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