It’s an unlikely setting for such a creative endeavor: a 22-story high-rise that served as the headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell for nearly four decades. And though it stood just across the harbor from Amsterdam’s bustling Central Station, few had ever been inside—or even gotten close to it. The building was part of a 66-acre private waterfront complex of laboratories, offices, and staff housing that served the oil and gas giant—an area entirely off limits to the public since the mid-1960s.still, locals—and certainly tourists—didn’t much care to go to this northern district; with no restaurants, no bars—nothing but abandoned industrial sites and derelict shipyards to the west, and farther inland, quiet, working-class neighborhoods—there was little reason to cross the river.