Description

Urban context

Hoogvliet is a satellite city about twenty kilometers from the center of
Rotterdam. A residential area without an identity in the 1960s, in recent years
it has become known for considerable social problems. The Alverstraat
residential complex is part of a restructuring process whose goal is to
reinforce the qualities of the relaxed development with lots of greenery,
replace some of the old housing stock with new buildings, and to improve the
social mix while retain existing residents. Following these guidelines at this
site near the water resulted in a mix of privately financed condominiums and
subsidized apartments for seniors. A system of meandering slabs connected by
access galleries together with a ten-story tower set at a distance – whose
widened ground floor houses the supermarket and parking deck – resulted in an
ensemble that influences the area.

Ground-floor zone

Between the three-story slabs are public passageways, courtyards, and private
garden terraces for the ground-floor apartments. The stories of the terraced
structure are stacked such that the projecting part of the building provides
covered resident parking. The meandering structure permits the neighborly living
streets to open up onto the existing park landscape, with its large trees and a
canal to the southwest. The layout of the slabs is mirrored in such a way that
the front garden zones, where no cars are permitted, face each other and the
roads used by cars could be minimized. Open stairs and elevators on the short
ends lead to the upper access galleries.

Building structure

The point-block typology of the tower is organized by vertical point access with
six units per floor via two interior elevators. Wide, terrace-like balcony zones
surround the apartments. The generous private open areas have outstanding views
into the surroundings. The slabs to the south have terrace zones as deep as four
meters in front of them. Permanently installed screens separate them into a
front-garden zone and an access gallery zone and also separate the front gardens
from one another. The all-glass apartments have their dining and living spaces
oriented toward the terraces. This residential complex is distinguished by the
consistent orientation of the private apartments onto communal and public open
spaces.

Facade

The design of the facade is characterized by the terraced configuration of the
building and the autonomous spatial zones of the open areas. The color of the
translucent railings symbolically transports the special meaning of these zones
to the outside. In just a few years, a green, neighborly microclimate has
developed in the complex.

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