Description

As used here, ‘infrastructural engagements’ are rather more territorial than they are about housing and building types per se, even though they involve housing and some presence of infrastructure in a manner that has a shaping influence on the housing. The term ‘infrastructure’ has a multitude of uses but generally refers to installations that are necessary for the functioning of some undertaking, even if they are subordinate to that undertaking and, etymologically, ‘below’ that undertaking. Apparently, the term first entered the English language in 1927 although in a direct connection with prior French usage that had been around since the latter part of the nineteenth century, referring to rails, bridges, and tunnels or the subgrade of French railroads.
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In the context of this book, ‘infrastructural engagements’ refer to at least three kinds of housing conditions. The first is where housing comes to occupy the sites of infrastructure from a former time, such as abandoned railroad yards, disused shipyards and port facilities and, potentially, moribund airports. Aspects of these engagements shaping housing are sometimes dimensional and concerned, for instance, with widths of wharves and dimensional characteristics of rail sidings, along with the manner in which these aspects are reflected in housing form. Also at stake can be the relative prominence of a former infrastructural site in a city, such as along a waterfront, and issues of public access and use together with the priority and position of housing in that cause. Technical concerns with remediation of brownfield sites and related foundational capacities may also bear on what can be housed appropriately. The second kind of infrastructural engagement is when a local element of infrastructure, such as a road or utility improvement, is manifest in an overt expressive fashion within the housing complex. This immediately raises the issue of how and why this was done, especially returning to the earlier definitions of infrastructure as being somehow less visible. Finally, the third kind of infrastructural engagement concerns housing alongside of particular infrastructure in a manner of mutual dependency. This can involve both infrastructure in support of undertakings involving housing and vice versa, housing taking advantage of particular infrastructural alignments and other related circumstances. Often in each instance, the impetus shaping housing derives from the precise point and style of contextual engagement.

Precedents: Direct Engagements and Reifications

Relatively early on in Japan’s and Tokyo’s process of modernization direct engagement between railroad infrastructure and housing was a significant component of urban expansion. The circumferential Yamanote line that roughly circumscribed the 23 inner-city wards of Tokyo was completed by Japan Rail – the national rail company – by 1919. Urban expansion beyond was accelerated in the wake of the disastrous Kantō earthquake of 1923 and often took the unusual form of real estate companies and promoters going into the railroad business in order to make their suburban sites more accessible and, therefore, more attractive. This applied to both residential as well as to retail commercial markets still visible today with the naming of subway lines according to retail chains like Tōkyū. Amid these developments, Shibusawa Eiichi founded his Garden City Corporation in 1918 with the aim of demonstrating the efficacy of Garden City principles in the urbanization of Tokyo.
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This non-profit corporation purchased 405 hectares of land near the Tama River to the south and west of central Tokyo for which a plan for Denenchōfu, as the development was called, emerged in 1924. The project was targeted towards middle-class homebuyers and consisted of sites mainly for single-family dwellings on relatively large lots and within a street pattern that radiated out from the more or less central location of a railroad station on the Meguro-kamata line. Overall, accommodation was to be provided for 30,000 inhabitants, consistent with Garden City principles of founders like Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin. Adjacent to the station, non-residential functions were conveniently located around a village-like semi-circular plaza. Incorporation of the project had to await completion of the railway link, which in turn was slowed by the calamitous aftermath of the Kantō earthquake. Guidelines for the residences, constructed mainly at the behest of individual homeowners, included stipulations about minimizing disturbance to neighbors, building to land cover ratios of less than 50 percent, constructing structures of no more than three storeys in height, accommodating street to building setbacks of around half the width of the street, and conforming to minimum cost requirements in order to further maintain a high quality of development. Styles of houses ranged from Taishō period hybrids, to teahouse style, and even to overtly western pre-modern references. Today, Denenchōfu has become denser by way of building occupation, as smaller houses have been added to or demolished and replaced by larger dwellings. Nevertheless, much of the earlier vegetated character and quiet neighborhood feel has been preserved.

Housing responding in the opposite direction, namely to the opportunities presented by infrastructure investments, like railroads, are far more common and generally follow, in the density and type of configuration, relationships corresponding roughly to ‘highest and best use’ of land based on accessibility. One such project is housing associated with Euralille, France,
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under a plan prepared by OMA around 1994 in association with Lille becoming the pivot point for high-speed trains (TGV) from the north-east of the continent and from across the Channel in England. Essentially Euralille was a specially-chartered company as a public-private enterprise and the project site was located on the western side of the city among an ad hoc arrangement of buildings around the périphérique of Lille. The basic components of the project were accommodations for the TVG station, 45,000 square meters of office space, 31,000 square meters of shopping, a 10-hectare park, three hotels, and 700 apartments. The housing component is located adjacent to the Euralille Center, a complex that combines most of the other programmatic elements of the overall project into a more or less singular project of tower blocks interlocked with the sprawling mass of shopping and entertainment venues. In fact, it is directly next to and otherwise extends existing housing into the Euralille site. The first phase of the housing is by Xaveer de Geyter and covers 13 hectares in the form of low- to mid-rise slab blocks that respect the location of existing vegetation and other building envelope constraints. The parallel linear arrays of housing also incorporate a variety of courtyard and other community open spaces across the ground plane. A second phase of housing has been proposed to the southeast of the station by Leclercq and Dusapin, rounding out the dwelling unit total. Again, it is being built in response to the opportunity presented by the infrastructure and other improvements, rather than the other way around as in Japan.

Manifestation of the literal presence of an infrastructural element in conjunction with housing occurred with the so-called ‘wall’ component of the Byker Redevelopment in Newcastle-upon-Tyne of 1969 through 1982, mentioned earlier. As described, the issue at hand was audial and visual screening of a motorway that was planned to pass along the northern edge of the project. It also provided spatial enclosure to the Byker community and evoked a certain recall of a Roman wall that allegedly had been built in the general area during antiquity. As it turned out, the motorway was never built, but its anticipation in the Kendall neighborhood of the community led to the architectural reification of the line of the roadway improvement.
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Designed by Ralph Erskine with Roger Tillotson and Vernon Gracie, the Byker Wall also housed the existing Shipley Baths and a church from the prior era. In common with other non-residential facilities of the old neighborhood, these functions were preserved, improved, and incorporated into the overall scheme of the Byker. Rising some eight storeys in height, the ‘wall’ component functioned as a big building submultiple on a 1.82-hectare site, incorporating 212 dwelling units and a density of close to 400 people per hectare. Although relatively blank on the outside ‘motorway’ aspect of the project, open balconies, terraces, and walkways across the façade facing out towards the Tyne River offered superb views and a sunlit dwelling environment. Bridges extending from the wall to adjacent so-called ‘link units’ also extended the infrastructural aspect of the project into other parts of the scheme, running downhill towards the river. Open space next to and nearby the ‘wall’ also offered a variety of private and community-oriented garden conditions.

Another example of the overt manifestation of infrastructures occurred at the Malagueira Quarter housing project by Álvaro Siza, dating from 1977, in Évora in central Portugal. Built on the site of the Quinta da Malagueira, a former latifundia estate, the quarter was a part of the municipal government’s low-cost housing program, including accommodation for a local gypsy population. It also coincided with efforts to better integrate peripheral zones of cities in Portugal with surrounding areas. Covering some 27 hectares, the project was comprised of around 1,200 dwelling units in total, divided into blocks of about 100 units, with parallel linear arrangements of attached courtyard houses and also including a modest array of community facilities and public open space.
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The reified infrastructural element of the project took the form of large rectilinear utility ducts constructed from concrete blocks and spanning between one-storey-high supports. These elements, in turn, linked various blocks of houses together, as well as providing a palpable backbone to the courtyard houses themselves, set on small lots of around 96 square meters each. In the context of this kind of evolutionary housing, which could be added on to over time, the infrastructural ducts provided both a sense of completion to the project along with a sense of community identity as well as formal order in the surrounding landscape. Far from being unusual in the setting of Évora and its countryside, they also referenced the aqueducts in the former Roman town itself, as well as the later eighteenth-century versions that criss-cross the agricultural estates outside. Housing ranged from single- to double-storey units with courts to the front or rear, constructed of concrete block, poured-in-place slabs and white stucco finish. Relatively narrow yet well-scaled streets also provided a sense of familiarity with nearby earlier informal settlements. Also, with a residential density of 75 units per hectare, or 300 people per hectare, the project was relatively dense for low-rise construction.

With regard to infrastructural engagements, concerned with occupation of sites of former infrastructural improvements, there are, of course, many precedents in various parts of the world. These could include the Charlestown Navy Yard housing in Boston, Massachusetts, parts of the Docklands in East London, and even Battery Park City in New York. In addition to replacing the finger wharves that extended into the Hudson River on Lower Manhattan’s west side, the last project also involved landfill to fully create the site, taken largely from the excavations of the World Trade Center Towers built in 1973. The plan that was implemented was by Cooper & Eckstut in 1979 and extended the roadway infrastructure of the city into the landfilled site, culminating in a well-amenitized pedestrian promenade along the riverfront of the project.
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High-rise in character, the built fabric, consisting mainly of housing, conforms to the street pattern and offers extraordinary views towards New Jersey in a manner reminiscent of New York’s earlier tall buildings discussed in a prior chapter.

Contemporary Cases: Re-Occupation of Urban Sites

The docklands of Amsterdam also offered an opportunity for the city to reclaim the prime waterfront site, for the importance of the local shipping industry had been declining for years. Besides the Borneo Sporenburg project, which was briefly discussed as part of the Eastern Harbor District redevelopment in the previous chapter, an earlier example that later became influential was the IJ-Plein by OMA, designed between 1980 and 1982, and completed in 1988. Located across the Het IJ from Amsterdam’s historic center and the Eastern Harbor District (Oostelijk Havengebied), the site was a former shipyard right at the tip of the industrial district known as Amsterdam-Noord. Prior to the 1900s, Amsterdam-Noord was not considered an official part of Amsterdam city; its administrative recognition and emergence at the turn of the twentieth century was associated with the concentration of industries, particularly those related to shipping, resulting in its growth as a working-class, industrial area. The area’s fortunes changed, however, after the Second World War and during the latter half of the twentieth century with the beginnings of de-industrialization and the city’s diminishing role as a major shipping port.

With the closure of the west harbor division of the Amsterdam Dry Dock Company that had occupied the site right at the tip of Amsterdam-Noord bordering the IJ, a window of opportunity presented itself for the construction of the IJ-Plein, the first housing project in the district to recover the waterfront, a significant change of orientation for a city that had essentially turned its back to the harbor for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In fact, as early as 1974, the city had revealed its plans to convert the shipyard and the IJ-Plein and its environs into a new residential sub-centre for the city, under the direction of the Stuurgroep Aanvullende Woningbouw or Steering Group for Supplementary Housing which played a central role in urban renewal.
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The land itself was acquired by the city government, which thus maintained the powers to strategically determine the use, quality, and amount of land available for development. Thereafter, the city’s Department of Town and Country Planning (DRO) designed a plan in 1980 for the redevelopment of the IJ-Plein, composed primarily of five-storey closed perimeter residential blocks arrayed across the site. Unfortunately, the scheme was not well received by the Amsterdam-Noord inhabitants who demanded unobstructed views of the IJ and the historic city. It was at this juncture that Rem Koolhaas and OMA were appointed by the Public Housing Department to serve as a ‘conditioning architect’, mediating between the DRO and the various architects who would be involved in different sections of the plan, but more significantly, to devise an improved plan.
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Koolhaas and OMA first assumed a brainstorming session where 25 different housing typologies, ranging from Le Corbusier’s Ville contemporaine and Unité d’habitation to Cerdà’s Plan for the Extension of Barcelona, were tested out on the site, on the assumption that there were no limiting constraints, so as to figure out how the same number of dwelling units could be accommodated within the various models.
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Initial design sketches that followed revealed the team’s preoccupation to extend the visual axis from the Meeuwenlaan road meandering along the edge to the water, effectively dividing the site into two. In addition, the team proposed for land reclamation to be undertaken in filling the shape of the dock to increase the available land area for development. In this preliminary plan, the eastern, triangular-shaped section was to be composed of low-rise buildings in open blocks, whereas the western section was intended to be a dense cluster of high-rises, separated from the eastern half by a park that served as a visual corridor. The park was to be situated above the newly-reclaimed land, thereby preserving part of the original form of the site. Spanning across the three sections was an east-west axis to link them together.

The neighboring residents, however, vetoed the high-rise element of OMA’s initial proposal, prompting the team to revise the western section based on the model by the Luckhardt brothers in Berlin during the 1920s for a ‘Stadt ohne Höfe’ or ‘City without Courtyards’; such a model consists of low- to mid-rise bars flanked by urban villas. Further, with the IJ-tunnel running under the western section, the team had to ensure that construction above grade along this infrastructural right-of-way was minimized.
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The final master plan was composed in the form of a montage, setting out parallel bars of housing in the eastern section, with a triangular open space in the center, while the western section was a mixture of urban villas arranged in bands alongside the two longer bars. Diverging from these vertical striations were horizontal slabs raised on pilotis straddling across at the southern edge of the triangular park on the eastern half, oriented towards central Amsterdam. To attain a certain degree of formal coherence for the district, OMA established a set of urban design guidelines that intervened using a zoning envelope, stipulating the circulatory access to the residents, down to details like establishing the color of the façades and the materials.
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In total, 1,375 units of social housing were accommodated on the 17-hectare site, equivalent to a relatively low density of 81 units per hectare, supported by shops, a school, community center, and a variety of public green spaces. Apart from the two slender bars defining the eastern edge of the site and the public school along the waterfront that were designed by OMA, the rest of the buildings were commissioned to a cast of different architects, including Bureau Hein van Meer which designed three of the urban villas, Architectengroep 69 which designed the horizontal slab, and Bureau Budding en Wilken that designed the Youth Center adjacent to Meeuwenlaan and the bright-orange pavilion by the water’s edge.

Of the pair of parallel blocks by OMA, the longer slab with a built area of 11,860 square meters is raised on pilotis, underneath which is tucked an assortment of programs, including a market and a community center, each of which is housed in a triangular structure, shops which are accommodated in two glazed oval structures, bicycle parking, and lobby entrances to the apartments above. Moreover, by opening up the ground level of the slab, the street is allowed to pass underneath the building, creating more open space at this level, rather than acting like a wall-like barrier enclosing the perimeter. Vehicular parking is provided for by the space in front of the slab, running alongside the marina where boats are docked. Although the building bears a formal vocabulary similar to the rest of the blocks with its flat roof, strip windows, and stuccoed treatment, the interior circulation showcases an ingenious way of producing unit variation through the deployment of different stair systems. Besides the apparent use of metal-clad switch-back stairs that grace the structure where the ground level is free, providing access to units with balconies supported by perforated steel columns rising four-storeys above the ground, OMA also incorporated two other systems. One is the conventional galleries accessed by two stairway cores, used for the single-loaded narrow ‘HAT units’, as they were dubbed, along the northernmost third of the bar. The other is a transverse system of cascading stairs used for accessing the one- and two-bedroom units at the southernmost third of the bar, where the unusual section cuts generated a layout that shifts at every level. On the top floor where the stairs merge, the gallery is encased within a translucent glass enclosure to ensure a degree of privacy for the apartment terraces sandwiched between them.

Separated by a pedestrian court is the shorter of the two blocks, with a built area of 4,560 square meters. Here, unlike the switch-back stairs that are spaced regularly along the longer block, the façade of this shorter block is lined with a multitude of glass-covered stoops providing direct access to three- or four-bedroom apartments on the first three floors, creating a rhythmic interplay and contrast between the two bars. Inside the seemingly straightforward block, OMA introduced a system of lateral cascading stairs running through the spine of the block, resulting in an ingenious stacking of apartment units, and communal living arrangements on the top floor. In total, 202 units ranging from dormitories to five-room configurations are accommodated in this pair of buildings. Within the dwelling units, which are no more than 15 meters deep in the longer block and 11 meters deep in the shorter one, glass walls are copiously deployed, such as between the living and dining areas, lending a sense of spaciousness as well as transparency. In addition to the lengths of these buildings that reify the original dimensions of the shipyard site, the intentional choice of materials, in particular the metal-clad staircases and elevator shaft, and the perforated steel columns, pay homage to the industrial heritage of the place, albeit in modern, subtle gestures.

If the IJ-Plein had set the precedence for subsequent redevelopment of the abandoned docklands in Amsterdam, the Eastern Harbor District, of which Borneo Sporenburg was a part, arguably showcases the evolution and array of spatial strategies in revitalizing former infrastructural sites in a key area of the urban center. Identified as early as 1974 to be a sub-centre, the Eastern Harbor District took another 13 years of much planning and revision before the first pylons were driven into the ground for the new residences that would later occupy the site. Up until the mid-1980s, land reclamation and filling-in of the docklands was the modus operandi for the harbor basins, yielding larger plots of land that would presumably lend themselves easier to carrying out the redevelopment while providing room for green space and recreational amenities. Residents who had occupied the district as well as squatters who had lived there illegally after it was abandoned, lobbied against this notion and called for the retention of the original docklands character of the place. Their emphasis was on the water and the intrinsic value of the canals or as a type of blue open space, encapsulated in their legendary slogan, ‘blue is green’ which later profoundly shaped the approach in which the district was redeveloped.
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A key design principle arising from this was the use of the “island structure as the foundation” upon which the residential areas would be constructed as articulated in the memorandum issued by the city planning department.
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In contrast to the IJ-Plein which filled in parts of the harbor, the original form and dimensions of the Eastern Harbor District docklands thus had to be preserved, with development to occur alongside the elongated nature of the quays as a means of response to the inherent structure of the site.

To overcome the problem of north-south connection across the site, and together with a policy on improving the competitiveness of public transport beginning in the 1980s, bus routes were introduced as the islands were transformed in phases, running in a radial fashion primarily along the western edges of the islands and the length of Java-eiland, with occasional stops extending into the middle of the islands, as was the case of Sporenburg. The bus services were supplemented by the extension of tram lines to Java-eiland and the opening of the IJ-tram that traversed the district in an east-west manner terminating at the IJ-burg further out to the east. Development on Borneo Sporenburg was initiated in 1992, and at that time, a survey of the recently completed KNSM-eiland revealed that there were only singles or couples residing in the owner-occupied apartments with hardly any children.
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Moreover, the housing on Borneo Sporenburg would be ready for sale around the same time as the new apartments on Java-eiland.
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The main objective thus was to provide distinctive housing types that would appeal to families with children, and primarily in the form of low-rise, single-family dwellings without shared or semi-public stairwells, lifts, galleries, or corridors in a manner that would still be able to meet the density requirement of 100 dwellings per hectare. In concert with the deregulation of the Dutch housing market in the early 1990s moving away from state-subsidized social rental housing, housing associations and private developers had to work creatively in catering to a freer market economy. In the case of Borneo Sporenburg, only 30 percent of the 2,150 units were reserved for social rental housing, while the remaining 70 percent would be owner-occupied. The development was undertaken by New Deal, a consortium of three housing corporations, which had the permission from the city to develop an urban plan and construct most of the residences.

After two rounds of commissioned studies by nine different architectural firms, the scheme by West 8 was selected for its incorporation of the basic design principles set out by the Spatial Planning Department. Refined later by Rudy Uytenhaak, who had devised the Java-eiland plan, the scheme was composed of low-rise, high-density housing bands that combined street-front and walk-up units, terminating in ‘end block’ typologies that responded to the idiosyncratic parcels at the ends, as well as the ‘meteorites’ inspired by the large blocks such as the Piraeus located across on the KNSM-eiland. By combining this sea of single-family dwellings with the apartment complexes, Adriaan Geuze and his team were able to attain the density stipulated by the city and the developer. Within this primarily residential order were other programs including two schools, a sports center, a medical institution, shops, offices, restaurants, and a yacht club. The most unusual and arguably most documented feature of this project built between 1996 and 2000 was the 60 freehold parcels that were sold to individual owners through a lottery system by the municipality in which the owners had the autonomy to work with their preferred architects in designing their canal houses.

To maintain the formal and figural cohesiveness of the two islands while still producing an impressive assortment of architectural expressiveness, the owners and architects had to work within the design parameters established by West 8 in their re-interpretation of the traditional Dutch canal house. First and foremost, a 30 to 50 percent void was dictated within each of the free parcels, resulting in creative internal configurations through the rhythmic interplay of voids and solids. In doing so, the typical outdoor gardens and spaces in the Dutch row house were interiorized, complete with private courtyards, roof gardens, and patios. A second specification was for individual access to each of the single-family dwellings, such that each unit had a front door to the street, as opposed to the shared access in the sculptural blocks or the mid-rise complexes on the other islands. A major deviation from the conventional floor-to-floor height of 2.4 meters in the Dutch context was a push towards a higher standard of 3.5 meters.
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Since the parcels ranged from 15 to 19 meters in depth, and just 4.2 to six meters in width, increasing the floor-to-floor height was vital to allowing more daylight penetration, and potentially for the future commercial rezoning of the ground floor. Finally, the building materials were limited to a palette of dark-red mixed brick, Oregon Pine and Western Red Cedar, and steel lattice gates.
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For the 60 free parcels in particular, these guidelines generated an architectonic diversity, both in the floor plans and the façades, within a uniform urban envelope. Apart from local Dutch architects who were commissioned to design these free parcels, internationally-renowned architects like Herzog & de Meuron, Xaveer de Geyter, and MVRDV were also involved. In Borneo 12 and Borneo 18, for instance, which were designed by MVRDV, two distinct elevations on the street front were deployed: Borneo 12 as a seemingly enclosed solid mass with a void in the form of a private alleyway occupying half the width as compared to the transparent glass-box-like façade of Borneo 18. Spatially, Borneo 12 played on the notion of ‘bands’ in the two islands, dividing the mass into two narrow ‘strips’. One of the strips runs through the entire depth of the parcel at the full height of 9.5 meters, while the other is broken down into two volumes grafted onto the main ‘stem’; the displacement of these two volumes allows the continuation of the void into the house, creating an air well that brings in more light into the house. The lower of the two volumes contains a double-height work space, while the other which extends across the upper two floors of the house serves as a bedroom/bathroom suite. In Borneo 18, MVRDV began with a four-storey section measuring 12 meters deep that was cleverly accommodated within the height confines of the envelope. Here, a void was left at the back of the house fronting the canal, creating a four by five meter garden plot on the basement level right by the water. However, by sliding the second floor out towards the back, this resulted in the capacious, light-filled living room extending three storeys in height on the front, and an outdoor balcony on the third floor resting atop the enclosed block, housing the bedroom and bathroom, with a view above the canal on the second floor.
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The rest of the end blocks and low-rise dwellings were subjected to the same design provisions, and given over to a cast of international and local architects, including OMA, Josep Lluís Mateo, UNStudio, Kees Christiaanse, and Claus en Kaan. In Mateo’s rectilinear housing block at the head of the Borneo island, a total of 11 different floor plans ranging from 110 to 180 square meters were accommodated in the 26 narrow terraced houses arranged back to back. While the project comes across as a massive, tight scheme on the exterior, clad in red cedar timber paneling on the southern façades and brickwork on the northern facades, relief is provided by the cutouts on the upper two floors yielding small private courtyards, gardens, and roof terraces, as well as internalized green spaces.
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This clear separation of the inside/outside, private/public is a trope that manifests similarly in the projects undertaken by Claus en Kaan in Borneo Sporenburg, spanning seven sites including an end block on Sporenburg. All the narrow dwellings are again laid out in a back-to-back fashion with two basic forms that are then articulated to attain a variety of configurations by combining the living rooms, voids, patios, and roof terraces differently.
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Overall, by adopting the same strategy as OMA for the IJ-Plein where an assortment of architects was assembled to respond to established design codes specific to the two districts, a diversity of forms and unit types were produced, resulting in two lively yet architecturally cohesive neighborhoods on previously derelict infrastructural sites. Located in the same city yet completed close to two decades apart, they reflect not only a continued desire to reclaim the waterfront, but also shifting approaches in working with and (in the case of Borneo Sporenburg and the greater Eastern Harbor District) amplifying the conditions and dimensions endowed by the shipyards and docklands of the past.

Typal Independence, Reciprocity, and Contextual Influence

Looking across this material, several general observations can be made. First, there is a relative independence, in this largely territorial type, of housing types per se. The cases presented show a wide range from single-family dwellings up to tall buildings, as well as big buildings as submultiples. It all depends on the particular territory involved, its infrastructural conditions, and the suitability of one housing type over others. Second, there is reciprocity in the infrastructural engagements. As alluded to in the introduction, infrastructure brings housing and housing brings infrastructure. Clearly, in the case of Denenchōfu and many other Japanese residential developments, the infrastructure, in the form of a railroad, was used to bring value to the resultant site and to facilitate its development. In short, real estate companies were in the railway business. At Euralille, by contrast, site circumstances, along with the massive high-speed rail installations and ancillary commercial interests, created a fertile ground for housing development. In the cases where infrastructure was expressively reified within housing complexes, as at Malagueira and the Byker Wall, reciprocity also applied. The planned motorway, for instance, occasioned the Byker Wall housing complex and not the other way around, whereas the linear grouping of housing also in need of basic utilities occasioned the viaduct-like installation at Malagueira.

Then too, the presence of former or existing infrastructure can present both opportunities and constraints for housing and suggest contextual manners of shaping housing. The wharves at Borneo Sporenburg, for instance, suggested a historical landscape of attached row house-like dwellings, so typical of Amsterdam waterfronts, which was partially emulated in the contemporary proposal. The focal point of the station at the center of the Denenchōfu estate clearly suggested the radiating pattern of streets emanating from the small plaza in front of the station. Also, the Byker Wall had really no other alternative but to follow and parallel the alignment of the planned motorway. Further, in a closely related manner, the introduction of housing in place of infrastructure rather immediately offers a different reading and ambience to a section of a city. Suddenly it is habitable and approachable rather than being only serviceable and often off-limits. It is also a domestic landscape in lieu of one that is commercial or industrial. Finally, in those cases where some aspect of infrastructure is reified, such as the viaduct of utilities at Malagueira, a question arises as to whether the strong formal manifestation of infrastructure is justified. In other words, in what terms should this aspect of the project really be assessed? Of course, in this particular case, the reification of the infrastructure is largely symbolic, even if it is functional and offers a certain ease of longer-term maintenance. Moreover, it is symbolic in at least two senses. First, it connotes a kind of community solidarity among residents who are typically often footloose. Second, it is also in line with a long-standing chronicle of the manner in which water and other utility resources are brought to the landscape of Évora in Portugal, namely via viaducts and aqueducts.

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