Description

Urban context

This multipurpose building forms the southern end of Nolensplein, a large urban
square in the center of Venlo. The building replaced a postwar apartment complex
in the same location and houses thirty apartments, several stores, a police
station, and an underground parking garage with fifty-five parking spaces. The
residential part is divided into a southern slab and a northern one, both of
which are accessed in the center by an open, spacious wood stairway. As a
roofscape on the police station below it, it is an additional public space to
create community at the intersection between housing, neighborhood, and
municipal public space.

Ground-floor zone

The ground floor is occupied by stores and other commercial uses. The upper
floors are for residential use. The surprising aspect of this project is the
terraced courtyard space, which connects all the levels with one another. It
remains hidden from the square but is nonetheless publicly accessible from the
street via the end of the building. The system of access to the apartments is
provided both by a tower-like system of stairs and an elevator with connecting
footbridges and the open wood staircase.

Building structure

The northern residential slab faces the square, and the southern one faces the
sun. Two large cuts out of the volume to the north connect the southern slab to
the public square while conveying a sense of how the complex is staggered in
space away from the square. Each of the apartments faces two sides and is
arranged loftlike around a central block with the kitchen and sanitary
facilities.

Facade

The complex is surrounded by a perforated facade; the openings have different
forms depending on how public the use is supposed to be. The apartments have
wooden window frames; the police station has flush metal window frames; and the
store areas have windows set deep in their jambs. On the courtyard side a
uniform screen of wood slats, which depending on one’s point of view appear
transparent or hermetic, covers the two-meter-deep access corridors and thus
forms a subtle transition to the private areas. The all-wood material gives the
central open space the quality of a framed interior.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.