Description

This project description is an excerpt from the longer article “Housing and Landscapes”. For a comparative analysis and further data including accompanying graphs, please see the article “A Turning Point”.

In the historic city of Groningen, the Schots 1 & 2 project presents a slightly different engagement between housing and landscapes. Located in the CiBoGa terrain, an urban renewal project comprising Circus, Boden, and Gasterrein at the edge of downtown Groningen, Schots 1 & 2 are among 13 schotsen – compact residential blocks with collective internal courtyards – in the master plan proposed by S333. Covering an area of 14 hectares, the CiBoGa terrain was a former industrial site sandwiched between the Noorderplantzoen city park and the Oosterhamrikkanaal waterway. The master plan, which was undertaken in 1996 and slated to be completed in 2014, aimed to connect these two landscape elements through the mixed-use neighborhood, including capping the polluted ground with underground parking, reusing the industrial buildings for public programs, creating 900 residential units that would support a live/work environment, introducing retail and collective services on site, and, more importantly, establishing a “strong, clear identity for the landscape and public spaces”.[1]
Following their work on the master plan, S333 was commissioned in 1998 to design the first phase of this redevelopment project– Schots 1 & 2.

In contrast to De Citadel, which was undertaken by a private real estate developer in a public-private partnership, Schots 1 & 2 was taken on by a development consortium of private organizations including ING Vastgoed, Amstelland Onkwikkeling, Bouwbedrijf Moes BV, and Amvest Vastgoed, together with Groningen’s largest housing association, Nijestee Vastgoed, which supplies some 13,000 rental housing units in the city.[2]
Given this social agenda, 30 percent of the 149 rental units in the project were thus designated as social housing. From the outset, S333 pursued two key strategies: first, they sought to elevate the role of context, nature, and urban ecology in re-evaluating, re-interpreting, and re-organizing dense urban neighborhoods; and second, they attempted to create a “multi-layering of activities and landscape”, somewhat similar to the stratification at De Citadel, to offer a compelling alternative to the traditional urban block typology.[3]
In essence, landscape and ecology were central to the design considerations and outcomes in this project. Besides treating and sealing the previously polluted ground with underground parking, S333 also had to work within the municipality’s regulation for a car-free zone throughout the site, where parking is capped at a ratio of one parking space for every two dwelling units. Further, apart from creating a landscape link between the city park and the canal, the site is also conceived of as a buffer or transition zone between the historic city fabric to the south, and the twentieth-century housing types to the north, where the schots, or literally ‘ice floes’, float within this open landscape.

Schots 1 & 2 have distinct site conditions that have had an influence on their resultant forms. Schots 1 is located at the intersection of two main streets – Boterdiep and Korreweg – and occupies a single urban block. Schots 2 is separated from Schots 1 by a pedestrianized shopping street in between, and sits in a much larger urban block that has also retained some of the existing, one- to two-storey Dutch row houses along the eastern and northern edges. As such, this two-part ‘megaform’ extends itself horizontally while working to densify existing fabric, beginning with a three-storey limb of terraced houses on the eastern side of Schots 2 that slopes up towards four storeys as it wraps around the corner before it folds along the western edge adjoining the southern terraced limb that likewise starts off as a two-storey limb of terraced houses that rises up to three storeys as it wraps around the western edge, defining the shopping street together with the four-storey limb that it meets seamlessly. Across the lively ground-floor public realm that is created by the shopping and community amenities, Schots 1 continues the building topography with a three-storey bar mirroring the pedestrianized façade for Schots 2 that breaks at a key moment where it adjoins a C-shaped limb and ascends into an eight-storey tower. To accommodate the awkward site, the two building limbs similarly twist and turn in ways that continue to define the perimeter of the block. Like the three-storey bar that it grafts upon, the four-storey C-shaped structure fronting the arterial street of Boterdiep has two additional eight-storey ‘outgrowths’, effectively demarcating the ‘peaks’ within what the architects have termed as a “volumetric landscape”.[4]

The notion of landscape is also incorporated through the provision of an array of functional outdoor spaces, such as courtyards, collective roof gardens, vertical gardens, patios, and winter gardens. The gravel-covered courtyards are shaped by the arms of housing and shops embracing these internal collective spaces that remain accessible to the public, albeit through discrete openings that maintain a degree of intimacy within them. Few trees are planted within the sprawling, terraced courtyard of Schots 2, generating a space that seeks to bring nature into human habitation but is easily maintained for a high degree of use and pedestrian traffic. In fact, the communal courtyard in Schots 2 has become a popular recreational spot for the residents, with the gravel appreciated for its practicality in the rainy weather as compared to a surface of grass and mud. Gravel is also used as a roof surface material across the S-shaped limb of Schots 2, and the four-storey bridge of the C-shaped component in Schots 1, juxtaposed with patches of green on the collective roof gardens. These landscape surfaces thus act as green roofs for the city, with watering systems integrated into the building. With the eight-storey abutments on Schots 1, the vertical surface afforded by the increased building height also offered an opportunity for greening in the form of climbers such as ivy.

With regard to its façades, Schots 1 is clad entirely in glass with varying levels of transparency to endow it with more of an urban character, while Schots 2 is clad with western red-cedar boarding, punctuated only by full-length glass doors and windows. Despite the contrasting materials, the ‘megaform’ projects a coherent form not only through the play with volumes, but also the adoption of a common design principle where the façades for both sections would comprise an irregular alternation of openings and closed areas, thereby concealing the individual units from the exterior. To inject a sense of warmth to Schots 1, the fibre-cement panels on the walls of the access areas were painted red, offering a contrast to the green glazed façades of the dwellings, creating the impression of a pixelated surface with the irregular sequence of openings and glazed glass panels. Together, Schots 1 & 2 offer a diversity of accommodations for a range of household types, including families with children, couples, the elderly, and students. This is reflected in the assortment of unit types, with three- to four-room single-storey apartments in Schots 1 and Schots 2 on the order of 87 to 135 square meters and 80 to 90 square meters respectively, and seven different types of terraced houses in Schots 2, ranging from two- to four-storey units accommodating five to seven rooms on the order of 90 to 158 square meters. Overall, the program is varied and apart from the 105 apartments and 44 houses, the project also includes one medical center, two supermarkets, eight shops, 300 parking spaces, and a plethora of landscape spaces. Clearly, apart from the emphasis on social and programmatic diversity, there is also a high intensity of use and density on the order of 114 dwelling units per hectare within this 1.3-hectare site.

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Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.