Description

Urban context

In Oestover in southwest Amsterdam, a new residential neighborhood was
established on eighteen building sites in an area that had been developed in the
1950s and was indebted to the idea of the garden city. The strict block
structure consists of four blocks of apartment buildings to the north that form
courtyards, three fields of row houses that occupy the western edge, a
residential tower in the southeast, a neighborhood plaza that was left unbuilt,
and nine clusters of buildings, which will be discussed below. In a hierarchical
system of streets, paths, and lanes, traffic access is via neighborhood streets
running from east to west, crossed by narrow north-south axes for pedestrians
and bicycles.

Ground-floor zone

In this horizontally condensed residential architecture, nearly all the
apartments are accessed directly from the street through individual front doors.
The development is distinguished by the immediate encounter of private and
public space. The streets are characterized by alternating rhythms, the
juxtaposition of all entrances, and the various elements that ornament the
streets (narrow green strips with trees, street lighting, parking spaces). The
relief-like form of the continuous ground-floor base mediates between the
private units and the public space of the street by means of front doors that
are framed and set slightly back. The result is an entrance zone that is marked
by a minimal front yard in the form of an integrated planted element. There are
parking spaces in underground lots for a very limited number of residents but
most have to park on the street.

Building structure

The building cluster is composed of a wide variety of types of apartments and
buildings, placed side by side and on top of one another, with integrated
private open space, and shaped into diverse clusters by means of alignment and
mirroring. Each of the ground-floor units has a patio-like garden and the units
on the upper floors have terraces or loggias instead. The units and their open
spaces are put together in such a way that, despite the high building density,
they are protected from the eyes of others. The individual fields of clusters
vary from one to the next.

Facade

The residential complex does not reveal at first glance whether it is composed of
row houses or apartment buildings. The base zone of the ground floor is designed
in a way typical of perimeter block construction, with the material alternating
between brick and exposed concrete. The density of the buildings along the
street recedes on the upper stories in favor of private open spaces and
preserving the private sphere within the units. The modular arrangement varies
in height, resulting in a diverse look.

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