Honeycomb rows of eleven storey slab blocks stand on raised roadways, with the metro running above ground on its own viaduct.
What Bijlmermeer looks like
The estate is a honeycomb of eleven storey slab blocks set on a hexagonal grid, one design repeated block after block. runs long and straight along its street, a blank concrete end wall on one side and rows of balconies on the other, stacked identically from the ground floor to the roofline.
Cars use roadways raised above ground level, on streets such as , while walkways and cycle paths stay below among the grass and trees between the blocks. The metro crosses the estate at the same raised height, on its own concrete viaduct rather than sharing a street with traffic.
At the line stops at a platform built into that viaduct, glass and steel over the tracks above H-buurt. , the estate's first completed block, still stands nearby on Hoogoorddreef. It repeats the same eleven storeys across the grid as the newer blocks around it.
At the estate's southwest edge, opens onto ArenA Boulevard, a run of glass fronted venues under a raised pedestrian walkway. The 's roof shows above the rooftops from there, and the station itself is a long glass and timber canopy built over the platforms.
Shot in Bijlmermeer
Blue Movie was shot on location at Hoogoord in 1971, the first apartment block finished on the estate. The building was only three years old when the cameras arrived.
Blue Movie, 1971
Hoogoord
The film was shot on location at Hoogoord, then newly finished, rather than on a set. The tower's ground floor was altered in a later renovation, though the block itself still stands on Hoogoorddreef.
Stanley Kubrick shot A Clockwork Orange on Thamesmead's Southmere estate, a mass housing scheme from the same brutalist decade. Wide grass and water sit between its blocks there too, and pedestrians stay off the roads. The scale matches, whole estates built as repeating units rather than single towers. Thamesmead's blocks are lower and more angular than the eleven storey honeycomb here, so a wide establishing shot shows the difference more than a tight one does. Try searching mass housing estate now.
Park Hill was built with deck access, walkways in front of the flats known as streets in the sky. Doctor Who, The Full Monty, This Is England and '71 have all used it across five decades. It is the same repeated concrete run this estate has, though on foot rather than on a raised road. Park Hill's decks face the camera directly at every level, while the honeycomb blocks here read best from an angle that shows the balconies receding. Try searching concrete deck access flats now.
Corviale is a single kilometre long slab rather than a repeated honeycomb, but its scale and bare concrete carried La banda, American Assassin and the series Christian. From a distance it looks like the same era of mass housing. Its unbroken length gives it away in a wide shot, so framing on one bay of balconies holds the match better. Try searching long concrete housing slab now.
