In a plot of land which was occupied up to now by an old wood industry, a new important area of growth of the city of Groningen is developing. A new sports stadium, a park, a train station, offices and houses will generate new urban spaces in a proposal which is able to transform the current relationship of the outskirts with the historical centre of the city.

De Linie is a set of houses where 16 architects have received the commission of developing projects which might be repeated and incorporated, as if they were part of a combinatory set, into the general urban set.

Our proposal is developed in two versions: a generic one, on an average plot of land of 13,5 x 15 m, and a specific one, on a specific location on the border of a channel. The project is developed from a process in which we will define a limited number of elements whose modifications will allow the appearance of several variations depending on the particular use and situation.

We conceive the house as an inner space looking out at three different points of view: the street, the garden, the sky. Each of them represents three degrees of privacy: public, semi-public, and private. The built area is gathered in a strip of 5,50 m of width located on a side of the plot, generating in this way a spacious inner garden.

The outer space of the houses is characterised by the use of three different materials: wood, metallic slabs and Eternit, which will alternate themselves along the different houses, in a random process which will determine the image of this new extension of the city of Groningen.