Description

With the help of the nonprofit Centraal Wonen association, Houtwijk Cohousing Residences were established in The Hague in 1984. The impetus came from a group of interested parties who knew each other from an earlier project that never materialized. When the group of interested parties grew to around 20 and they identified a suitable plot of land, they began negotiations with the City of The Hague regarding a building lease contract.[1] In the next phase, the project was developed in close collaboration with the group of architects around Andries Van Wijngaarden and future residents. A participatory process was used for making many of the decisions, many of which were even self-built during realization.

The four-story building was designed to form a courtyard around the shared garden. An interior circulation area acted as a crucial spatial element, designed to create a collective main area that was far more than a rue intérieur. Not only did it open up to several shared kitchens and communal living spaces, it also housed three guest rooms, a quiet room, a hobby room, a music room, and a sauna. All collective areas and the 42 apartments of the Houtwijk Cohousing Residences had windows that visually connected to the interior circulation area. This high level of transparency strengthened connections to the circulation area, a concept also supported by various atriums in the corridors.[2] In order to make this generous communal area possible, residents chose to reduce their private living space. This active coalition remains a vitally important aspect of the residential project; even today a lively collective lifestyle can still be found at Houtwijk Cohousing Residences.[3]

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Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.