Could this be the future of creative working and living? Read my exclusive report to find out.
Okay, I’ve stayed in hotels in Amsterdam before. But never like this. When I wandered into the lobby at Volkshotel Amsterdam one October morning, it didn’t really feel like a hotel. This was something else entirely.
The ground floor is less like a reception area and more like someone’s extremely cool living room, where several interesting conversations were happening at once. People hunched over laptops. Someone sketching. Background music that didn’t make me want to immediately leave. And everywhere, people who seemed genuinely comfortable being there, not just passing through.
“It needs to feel at home,” Tijs Bullock, the hotel’s creative concept coordinator and PR manager, told me later. “It’s a free place for people to just experience the place and work there or study there. An open space not only for tourists, not only for the business people, but also for the people of Amsterdam.”
And this, it turns out, is the whole point.
From newspaper office to creative ecosystem
Volkshotel’s story is one of those heartwarming urban salvage jobs. The building was originally home to the major Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (‘The People’s Paper’) for 42 years. When they moved out, the building was in such rough shape that demolition seemed inevitable. But an organisation called Urban Resort Foundation stepped in and transformed it into what’s now one of the largest creative co-working spaces in the Netherlands.
Volkshotel (‘People’s Hotel’) evolved from there into something far more interesting. The front section became a hotel with rooms ranging from budget-friendly to spacious. But critically, the back wing remained dedicated to creative studios. Today, over 80 studios house over 200 creative professionals, along with 25 music studios featuring more than 100 musicians, DJs and producers.
It’s a full creative ecosystem under one roof, and the genius bit is how seamlessly it all connects. For instance, when Volkshotel needs design work—and apparently they need quite a bit, from illustrated soap bottles to custom city maps—they don’t farm it out to some corporate agency. They knock on the door down the hall. “Volkshotel loves to illustrate,” Tijs explained. “Our website, our soap bottles, our cups, our room keys, our city map—everything where we can illustrate, we ask an illustrator for.”
This isn’t just good PR. It’s a real, functioning economy within the building. The hotel provides affordable studio space to creatives who might otherwise be priced out of the city. In return, they get regular work, exposure to hotel guests from around the world, and the chance to be part of something bigger than their individual practices.
I spent time meeting some of these creatives, and what struck me wasn’t just their talent but also the genuinely collaborative environment. Illustrators Jasmijn de Nood and Anouschka Boswijk have been there for years. “It actually feels like a second home,” Anouschka told me. “We call each other ‘roommates’ because we see each other so often.”
Jasmijn added: “We have in our studio a lot of illustrators. So for us it’s so nice that we can learn from each other and also have the odd rant at each other. But I feel like in the hallway we also really kind of became friends.”
In another studio, costume designer Evita Rigert was working on pieces for a puppet opera. She doesn’t just like working at Volkshotel for the space and atmosphere, but also for the networking opportunities. “I just knocked on all the doors and annoyed the people very much,” she laughed when I asked how she’d connected with collaborators. “People really help you and support you, and that is the biggest plus here.”
And this doesn’t only apply to Dutch people. In 2026, the Volkshotel will launch an open call for its Artist in Residence project, making several of its studios available to creatives from around the world to work in Amsterdam for a couple of months. Stay tuned to Creative Boom, and we’ll share details as they emerge.
Why this model matters
Let’s talk about the reality of being a creative in 2025. If you’re freelance, you’re probably working from home, possibly from a corner of your bedroom. You may not see other humans in person for days at a time. Collaboration happens over Zoom calls where everyone’s camera is off. It’s isolating, is what I’m saying.
Generic co-working spaces, though, often feel soulless. Studio buildings can be equally anonymous. And genuinely affordable workspace in major cities? Forget about it.
What Volkshotel offers is different. It’s a workspace, yes, but it’s also a hotel, a bar, a rooftop restaurant, a club, a sauna, and a constant stream of interesting people from all over the world. “We try to create that micro society within this building,” Tijs said. “If you are a morning person, you can have your croissant and go up to the rooftop spa. But you can also be the night owl and go to bed at 6am when you’re done dancing in one of our clubs.”
This mix matters because creative work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens when you overhear an interesting conversation or see someone else’s work and think about collaborating. When you meet someone who knows someone who’s looking for exactly what you do. Serendipity requires proximity.
Amsterdam and the creative spirit
The reference Tijs made to clubbing, by the way, was no coincidence. I was in Amsterdam for Amsterdam Dance Event, the annual music industry gathering that takes over the city for five days every October. During those four days, I cycled through rain to catch talks, randomly stumbled into a session with Armin van Buuren, and danced in tiny bars. I hired a bike from Volkshotel and bombed around the streets trying not to crash into trams.
One night, I met DJ Carista, who was about to play a 12-hour set. When I asked about Amsterdam’s creative community, she was clear: “It’s tight-knit because everybody knows what’s up. But if you ask questions or just show up regularly, people like, ‘Okay, what is this person doing here?’ People are having an interest in certain stuff.”
That openness—that willingness to let people in if they’re genuinely interested—felt emblematic of the city. And it’s exactly the energy that Volkshotel has bottled.
At one point, I spontaneously burst into Thonik Studio, a design agency across the street from the hotel, after someone from there reached out on Instagram. They welcomed me in like I was an old friend, showed me around, and talked about the poster work they were doing for Dutch Design Week. It was that kind of place, that kind of city, that kind of energy.
Another morning, Jaap van Oirschot from Mr Fox Agency showed me around Amsterdam in the pouring rain. We visited the Skinny Bridge, stopped for croquettes at Van Dobben, and eventually wound up at the Stedelijk Museum for an Erwin Olaf exhibition. “Creativity holds no barriers for the weather,” Jaap said cheerfully as we set off in the downpour.
The economics of creativity
I don’t want you to think Amsterdam is all fairies and unicorns, of course. When I asked the illustrators about the creative economy, Anouschka acknowledged the challenges. “Funding obviously is dropping quite a bit. So that’s harder. But I still think it’s going quite well, actually. We still have enough assignments, enough to do.”
All this makes spaces like Volkshotel even more crucial. When institutional funding dries up, creatives need alternative models. They need affordable workspace and communities that can generate work laterally, from designer to designer, and from illustrator to DJ. They need spaces where collaboration happens organically because you share a corridor with interesting people.
The hotel model adds another dimension: exposure. Every guest is a potential client or collaborator. The walls are covered in work by resident artists. It’s a perpetual exhibition space that also happens to be a functioning business.
But unlike the tech-bro co-working spaces that dominated the 2010s, this isn’t about hustle culture. It’s simply about creating conditions where creative work can happen sustainably.
Could this be the future?
The question that kept nagging at me was: why isn’t everywhere like this? Obviously, there are practical barriers. Not every city has a disused newspaper building waiting to be converted. Not every developer wants to keep space affordable when they could charge market rate. And not every hotel group is willing to embrace the beautiful chaos of having musicians and illustrators as permanent residents.
But the model itself—mixing creative workspace with public-facing hospitality—feels genuinely radical. It solves multiple problems at once: isolation, affordability, exposure, community, and the simple human need to feel part of something larger.
What struck me most was how unprecious it all felt. There was no gatekeeping, no sense that you had to be the right kind of creative. “If you step into this building, your status disappears,” Tijs said. “That’s a bit of the philosophy of this place.”
On my final morning, exhausted from walking 33,000 steps the previous day, I reflected on how different this experience had been from a typical work trip. I’d met fascinating people. I’d discovered parts of Amsterdam I’d never have found otherwise. I’d worked a bit, danced a lot, and generally felt like I was participating in something.
I don’t know if Volkshotel’s model will catch on elsewhere. I hope it does. Because if this is what the future of creative workspace looks like—collaborative, affordable, integrated into city life, unpretentious and genuinely welcoming—then that’s a future worth building.
And if it comes with access to croquettes and Paul van Dyk sets, well, that’s just good planning.
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