In the past ten years the Wenslauerstraat in Amsterdam's Bellamybuurt has undergone a metamorphosis. The Bellamybuurt is a neighborhood where living and working are traditionally mixed. There is a diversity of buildings. This also applies to the designs of the Wenslauerstraat. A street full of M3H projects, where repair was the starting point for our designs.
Repairing is an interesting architectural design strategy. Take a building, block of buildings or a street that is not functioning properly anymore or is not ‘in synch’ with current times and demands. Buildings, blocks of buildings and streets have been evaluated time and again for centuries: houses change, building techniques improve and residents’ uses have adapted to the times as well. In our opinion, repairing therefore does not only need to focus on returning something to its old state. By adding something, the entity can take on qualities that suit our times. In order to repair in the first place it is essential that you have knowledge of what exists. In fact, the act of repairing actually helps us to better understand what exists.
In total we have designed five homes — two single family houses and three apartments. That gave us the opportunity to further accentuate the street profile. The built ensemble consists of two parts: a low building component with a lean-to roof. ‘The most striking thing about the whole intervention is how the ensemble re-articulated the profile of Wenslauerstraat, thus emphasising the everyday intimacy of the street,’ wrote architect Hans van der Heijden in 2014 in his introduction to the 2013 –2014 Architecture in the Netherlands Yearbook.
The façade of the larger whole has been abstracted by vertical wooden slats. The slats were placed like bricks laid to a header course; creating a natural picture. This is also the case with many of the older houses in the street, where one can see that in the past a great deal of attention was devoted to the carpentry and masonry. With a large glass front and a door on the street, each house clearly interacts with the public domain.
