Angie Abbink & Elsbeth Falk won this competition for 9 dwellings in a monumental urban setting by writing a fairytale about The Korrels (The Fragments) of Schoterburcht. This is the short version:
Schoterburcht is a medieval hamlet, an ensemble of special buildings, distinguished but crazy ladies, each from a different era, generations apart and yet strangely still family. Seen from close by this family is a collection of urban fragments, (‘korrels’ in dutch) each with a sad, tragic or happy story to tell. From a distance they blend together and form a whole in which they are forever bound. The new Korrels are born as extracts of Schoterburcht, contemporary abstractions of the rudimentary forms that make up the specific and memorable whole that is Schoterburcht. But the youngest additions to the family have discovered their own dual personality. While desperately desiring to be part of the family, part of the hard herd of urban fragments, they also long to lose themselves in the transitional soft world of the park around them. They dress themselves in a cloak of rusty brown steel, simultaneously hard and soft, durable and special, a fabric that is alive and becomes more beautiful as it ages. Subdued yet pertly the newcomers take their place in the new configuration of the fragments of Schoterburcht. The 9 new dwellings are covered from head to toe in Corten steel, and whilst they are seemingly traditional in form, they house spectacular contemporary homes.
