… traditional row housing as a starting point proved insufficient to meet this challenge.
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Following the competition win in January 1998, we were commissioned by the municipality of Haarlemmemeer in February 1999 to design 56 houses adjacent to the village of Vijfhuizen. The project forms the first phase of a large Vinex urban plan for 700 new dwellings that will be constructed on the edge of the existing village over the next 5 years.
The density of the housing, the smallness of the plots, and the intense mixture of different cost categories meant that traditional row housing as a starting point proved insufficient to meet this challenge. Our concept for the design offers an alternative way of living on the so called ‘Vinex’ sites in the Netherlands.
To begin with, a simple series of houses were designed and systematically located with each other in an innovative way. Through arranging the housing plots in a ‘regular irregularity’ organization of housing plots, the desired atmosphere of cosy village-like density with a remarkable contemporary openness was created. As a result of this the spaces between the houses become varied, resolving the desire/conflict for privacy and openness through the explorative use of diagonal views from inside to outside.
The houses themselves are conceived as a series of elemental and generic ‘farm-like’ typologies, in which the differentiation of housing types are developed through size. The elevations are conceived as a wrapping and intertwining of vertically grooved hard wood (Cumaru) siding and ribbed steel plating in equal proportion. Over time, the materials will blend with each other to create a ‘new oneness’.