A competition entry in collaboration with Frans Bochanen (www.fransbochanen.nl).

The challenge was to create attractive housing opportunities for young families close to the city centre of Delft. To make this affordable, a high density configuration is asked. How can stapled apartments still be attractive for young families? The competition asked for innovative ideas, for quality and variation in different concepts of living, since a permanent wish for differentiation, identity and uniqueness in dwelling projects are wanted.

We analysed that the wishes of young families (a house with a garden, opportunities for social interaction with neighbours and the possibility to park their car close to their front door) are met very well in the traditional Dutch closed urban block. The asked density for an urban location are however not reached. By stacking different closed urban blocks on top of each other, important quality characteristics such as a garden and parking on the same level are lost. By finding out that by simple erecting the urban block in stead of stacking it, we could create a high density and still keep space left for gardens and collective green.

Keeping close to the concept of the erected urban block, we designed private gardens in the middles of the raised blocks, introduced a public vertical street, where cars could be parked in front of ones doors using a car elevator and we twisted the masonry and detailed the walls as roofs.

This configuration not only created three times more appartments than in a classical situation, by the introduction of the public (partially vertical) street, all of the surface was usable as a public street, parc or as a collective garden and house.

Project team: Pieter Graaff, Frans Bochanen, completion: october 2009