Lagom Arkitektur

Borneo Sporenberg/ East Docklands, Amsterdam NL

The second stop on my tour of Industrial-Harbor-Turned-Dense-Residential-Development was the East Docklands in Amsterdam. The landfill harbor consists of a series of rectangular penninsulas that begin just on the periperhy of the old town. We rented bikes and rode there in about 10 minutes from the heart of the old city. The most fun part of the whole trip actually was biking through Amsterdam, it is a completely different experience to get out of people-watching mode and join the throngs. You have to get used to the rules of the road quickly though, because those moms wheeling their children and groceries around can be incredibly aggressive.

What I wasn’t expecting here was the sheer size of this redevelopment and the density of new housing there, and as I was only there for a day I wasn’t able tosee it all. I spent most of my time biking around two of the penninsulas, which are connected by two iconic red steel bridges that many of you may have seen, and which are moslty low-rise development. Some other parts of the project are much larger mid-rise apartment stlye buildings.





I didn’t have a map of the specific area with me, but the reading of the master plan is pretty clear from the perspective of the pedestrian; most of the housing is 3 story rowhouse/townhouse style units that run parralel to the waterfront edge. In some areas these townhouses are all individuated, and in some they are a part of a larger rowhouse mass. These mostly continuous bands of building are broken on each island by a massive apartment block (perimeter-style building around a courtyard) that is at an angle to the predominant geometry, and it is at these points where the geometry is broken that open space is more available and somewhat developed. The building below can be found in the plan below that; it is the large blue rectangle on the top pier that is off-axis to pier.



This plan of the project is courtesy of the net:



The responsible party for the master plan is West 8, based out of Rotterdam and doing interesting things all over the world, and their website below looks like it is all in Dutch but quite a bit of it is actually in english if you click on projects, etc.:

http://www.west8.nl/

A lot of innovative designs were tried here in terms of space planning for individual rowhouse units. Parking had to be included within the footprint of the units (very little surface parking was provided for in the master plan) which has led many people to the adoption of car elevators/lifts to store both their cars within the limits of their plot and within the space typically used for only one vehicle. Even on a weekday, both cars were parked in many of these units, a true measure of how much people here bicycle. Another challenge to the architects was that each home had to have 30%-50% void within the entire envelope of the lot, to provide for parking, daylight access, and open space for each unit. This leads to some interesting sectional characteristics:





Because of this open space requirement within the units, open space allotment for the whole neighborhood was minimized and more space was given over to units, allowing for a density of 40 units/acre which in low-rise housing is a substantial achievment. For some more information care of the master planners on the development of the project and more discussion of the 30%-50% requirement, click here:

http://www.west8.nl/W8_Projects/S/S038_Borneo-Sporenburg.html

I wasn’t able to get access to any units, which is unfortunate, but as the Dutch are generally not too private, with large windows opening directly onto the street at eye level, I had my share of glimpses inside. A very good case study in the following PDF link describes the project and includes a great drawing showing the sectional characteristics of one solution so you get and idea of the complexity of the unit designs. After opening the PDF link, which is a discussion on housing types, skip to page 11:

http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/09/04713193/0471319309.pdf

The architecture and construction of this entire area definitely provokes reaction, for myself a really positive one due to the quality of the architecture. The friends I was travelling with, 2 non-architects and 1 landscape architect, (though all of them opinionated!) were less impressed. I think I was tending to look at how certain building issues had been resolved or overall building form and composition, whereas their overall impression of the place left them cold. One thing we all agreed on: too much brick.

Overall, for dense housing I think the units provide an exceptional amount of the type of space that makes real living more possible, and certainly are a better model than US condominium/townhouse development where monotony prevails and valuable space is often wasted. People have the space within their limits to individuate their residences and have some sense of autonomy, to have privacy (even though as I've said the Dutch are not too concerned with privacy), access to daylight and air, and useable outdoor space where you can wash your car or fix your bike or create a vegetable garden all within the confines of your rowhouse and without extending beyond the building limits. It's easy to be critical of the open space around the buildings, but there has been a tradeoff where public outdoor space has been given up (and even ignored) for personal outdoor space, and it could be argued that this tradeoff is OK in this circumstance, but why not try for both?

One article about this project begins describing the “interplay between architecture and void”, in what is a true case of architectural rhetoric being mis-applied; there is no 'interplay' between the architecture and the void, only a stark distinction between the two. The very delineated environment mostly showcases the architecture to the detriment of the open space. Really wonderful ‘interplays betwen archtiecture and void’, both subtle and not so subtle, abound nearby so it is all the more obvious that this isn’t one. It makes me think of criticism that I got on my thesis’ master plan, where my open space gestures were undeveloped. The ‘voids’ in this project are just that: voids. Except for the canal that the individual townhouses are on, the spaces are not nice places to be in, even considering that the Dutch do live differently then we do. (By this I mean that there is a lack of formality to the living environment and a different understanding of public space. While on the one hand Dutch living is remarkably tidy, outdoor space is truly a realm of everyone and so if you want to take over a spot for a party or to do a building project, then it’s more than acceptable. You can park your bicycle wherver you want to, and you can put flower pots extending well beyond your front door and people do not consider this a problem, such that the sidewalk becomes stoop, park, front yard, barbecue pit, workspace, etc., but all without infringing on other people’s lives - people don't generally leave their messes behind them).

It was said by the master planners that the the quay’s presence and history as working piers were to be reinforced, and this is certainly the case; the whole neighborhood feels and looks exactly like it was dropped onto a formerly industrial pier, with no ’soft’ access to the water. More likely is that the re-working of these piers would have opened a massive can of worms and added huge sums to the costs of redevelopment, and so it was decided not to intervene with them in any way. The original pier walls down to the water, which are quite high, don’t allow the water to have any relationship besides that of a barrier to the residents, except in the portion of housing where the individual townhouses are directly on the water and the old canal type is referenced (another exception is when the Dutch mothers encourage their young children to climb out on the outside of one of the red steel bridges, 35'-40' above the water, to get to a rope swing). The proportions of the waterway in between the two main penninsulas isn’t quaint or intimate as it is in old town, and is quite unappealing as a body of water. It does look like people are starting to moor houseboats in this quay, and these do add a more lively and organic contrast to the rigid geometry of the waterfront. It seems strange that more marina functions weren’t planned for here, but maybe that is in the works. Interestingly enough, retail was kept out of the development due to an agreement with a nearby shopping center, and while cottage industries are allowed and encouraged (all ground level floor-to-floor heights were required to be tall to accept some type of storefront use and be adaptable in the future) there are no cafes or shopping areas to activate this waterfront.

Again, in some respects, this needs to be kept in context of the Dutch culture and also within the greater understanding that old town Amsterdam, with more than enough cultural bounty to go around, is a stone’s throw away. So in some repects it is a suburb of Amsterdam that you can walk to, and the ’activated’ retail street or neighborhood center is (arguably) not missed. In some ways the city does seem to be trying to tackle only the probelm of dense housing directly in proximity to old town, and not the bigger issues of creating a truly new and autonomous neighborhood; maybe that’s OK when you are so close to Amsterdam proper?

Zandvoort Housing

In the small Dutch coastal village of Zandvoort, we saw this:





This project took great advantage of a sloped site and included a lot of private open space for the tenants.


Malmö/ Vastra Hamnen/ Bo01 (Boo-noll-ett)

Back to Sweden: in the 1920’s and 30’s, the Swedish government took an active interest in subsidizing housing construction and the development of better residential construction techniques, as well as ’better’ housing design (floor plans, efficiency, access to light and air) for the masses. This is similar to a lot of social housing programs that were popular at the time throughout Europe. Housing exhibitions became a popular way to demonstrate these new techniques, and there has since been a long history of housing expos in Sweden. There is a constant refinement of mass housing happening here, and discussion about it; any random person that I talk to here knows all about the history of housing and all of the subtle nuances behind it when I tell them what my interests are. Housing has been, for so long, a political issue that is always before the voters; it’s used as taxes are in the US as an issue to rally behind. I’ve heard that Sweden did not escape the 80’s unscathed, however, and that housing built during that period was of low quality and somewhat unsightly, and most people don’t want to live in it.

There is a really great (and huge) stock of functionalist apartment blocks here from the 30’s-50’s that was a result of the government’s pressure on developers to build high quality housing, both materially and in terms of quality of life. These photos are of my functionalist neighborhood, Gardet, though these buildings can be seen all over Stockholm:











The architecture museum in Stockholm has a great exhibit on the different unit types developed over the years and there is a real line that you can follow through the rationale of what housing types were developed and why. There is also the (in some ways infamous) MilljonProgrammet housing stock that tends to be in the suburbs and, while generally of high quality, was developed around garden city ideals (probably too quickly), which left them isolated and somewhat lifeless. The MilljonProgramet was a project conceived of by the government and begun in the mid 1960’s to create 1 million housing units in 10 years throughout Sweden, where 100,000 units would be built each year for ten years. Immigrant populations and poorer folk have moved into some of these and so there is a general understanding of them by Stockholmites as ’ghettos’, and some of them were never inhabited because they were too isolated, etc. Keep in mind that the term ‘ghetto’ here (I hesitate to use the term) is hardly what we in the states would call this type of neighborhood. The fact is, however, that they do keep certain populations whether economically or ethnically different, isolated. They are also generally centered around one food shopping market chain and a pub or two, which makes them feel a bit like big-brother company towns. The government has put a large amount of effort recently into re-working these places to be viable, with the recognition that much of what was built was well-built and deserves the effort. There was a recent expo on one of these neighborhoods, called Tensta-Bo, and you can read a little bit about it at the link below (though most of the site is in Swedish, there is an english summary in the upper right, and to see photos to get an idea of the place, click on Bostäder which means ’place to live’/dwelling). In this expo/demonstration, some of the units were restored to their original look including furnishings, some were shown as they are used today, and some were reconstructed to show how they could be adapted to both todays and future uses.

http://www.tenstabo06.se/index1.htm

Fast-forward from that discussion to the mid-1990’s, when the organization in Sweden responsible for looking at housing development began to initiate a new housing expo, originally intended to coincide with the year 2000. The city of Malmö, at the Southern tip of Sweden and directly across from Copenhagen, won the competition for the site and the project eventually became known as Bo01.



There is a lot of behind-the-scenes intrigue for this project if you can wade through the hope, optimism, conflict, deadlines, and red tape that is behind all of it (which I hope to do justice to in my next post). For the less interested, suffice it to say that it was successful on some levels, and usuccessful on some levels, and yet has created a very much alive new district and has breathed a lot of new interest and investment into the city of Malmö. Malmö is a great city by the way, with a very lively old town and more ’funkiness’ in style than is typical in Sweden (based on it’s proximity to Copenhagen). My next blog post will primarily discuss Bo01.