On Tuesday afternoon, construction on De Helix, a new residential tower in De Hoogte neighbourhood in Groningen, officially began.
During a brief ceremony on Tuesday, alderperson Roeland van der Schaaf announced that De Helix was the winning submission in a contest to name the building. Geert Jan Arends submitted the winning name and received his prize – a Nijestee city bike – on Tuesday.
According to the Groningen Internet Courant, the building in the northeast of the city will have 222 residential units, including 116 studio apartments, 96 two-room apartments and 10 maisonettes. OOG TV reports that the units are likely to be especially popular for students and young professionals.
A bike garage with a rooftop park will also be built on site. The 22-story-tall building was designed by De Unie Architecten and will be built by Eelde-based Geveke Bouw & Ontwikkeling. De Helix should be completed by the end of 2019.
The name for the building was chosen from a competition which had 435 submissions. Ronald Koekoek from De Unie Architecten, Geveke Bouw & Ontwikkeling’s technical director Jacob Prins and Nijestee’s general director Pieter Bregman assessed the submitted names. All three jury members chose De Helix, which referred to the helix-like structure of the design of the residential tower.
