Description
Emerald is a “Vinex” location, a large suburban area declared by the Dutch Ministry of Housing for large-scale new housing developments. Here, the apartment complex and the adjacent shopping centre, though clearly distinguished in terms of programme and function, both stand out from the rest of the urban fabric. In the shopping centre, shops are situated on the ground floor and flats on the upper floors. Care services such as physical therapy, elderly care and medical facilities have leased commercial spaces. The apartments are arranged over six floors around a collective atrium, which serves as a common service area. From inside, however, the form is divided into four vertical blocks with open views to the outside. The wide two-storey entry lobby is designed as a continuation of the square outside.
The typical apartment floor plan has no hallway. Instead, there is a separate room, which opens via double doors onto the atrium and connects all rooms of the apartment including the living space. A balcony in front of this connecting space strengthens the relationship between the dwelling and the atrium. Apartments accessed via the gallery have their own winter garden, orientated to the south and west. Corner apartments have a more indirect relationship to the atrium, but are larger. Due to the unusual shape of the building, the apartment layouts feature four different corner typologies, which exploit the specific corner situations.
The large living space windows of the typical apartments connect the living room either with the apartment’s winter garden or with that of the neighbour. Two windows mounted in a robust timber frame can be slid to one side to fully open the winter garden. There are two variants of this sliding window: one pane of glass slides either in front of the other or in front of the brick façade cladding. The resulting patchwork of variations creates a lively and dynamic façade.
Inside, the quality of the atrium as an interior space is enhanced by the use of timber for the interior façades. The balustrades of the galleries are woven into a continuous, transparent screen with wide window-like openings to the atrium.
Drawings
Photos
Exterior Façade detail
View of the vertical access system
Originally published in: Eckhard Feddersen, Insa Lüdtke, Living for the Elderly: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2011.