OBA Next Lab
Amsterdam | Arie van der Neut, Antoine van Erp, Leire Baraja
Status: in progress
Built directly next to Kraaijenest metro station, the OBA Next Lab activates a former parking lot, transforming it from an overlooked space into a lively hub for learning, reading, and reflection.
OBA Next Lab is still under construction, but during the winter, multiple cohorts of participants have already explored robotics, music production, and coding — culminating in an online portfolio they can carry into the future.
OBA Next Lab is a design lab embedded in one of Amsterdam's most underserved neighborhoods — a space that reimagines what a public library can be. Where a traditional library offers books and silence, Next Lab offers tools: robotics, coding, music production, cinema. It is a place built on the premise that access to creative technology is not a privilege, but a right.
The building itself reflects this ambition. Designed to be open, legible, and welcoming, it sits within a community that has long been overlooked by cultural institutions. Its presence is deliberate.
This project follows the space in use — the people who move through it, learn in it, and make things within it. Not the building as object, but the building as it comes alive.
