E11. Europan 11, Almere

Description:

Shorlines. A landscape-oriented approach to the holiday-homification of daily life

The car-friendly city responded to the 20th century modernist Charta announcing the city’s functional division between leisure and work. Around 80 years after the Athens Charter the planning of infrastructural networks still relies to a great extent on private car-traffic – with all its negative repercussions on daily life. Particularly a distributed network such as the Dutch „randstad“ is unthinkable without this great degree of connectivity. Next to that mid Europe‘s service-societies face a 24/7 impact of their respective businesses on their spare-time: the previously separable work and leisure conditions are increasingly difficult to separate. Thanks to contemporary means of digital communication previously fixed workspaces become mobile – and might help to reduce commuting again.

Since the need for work-efficiency is unlikely to decrease it is now necessary to massage a kind of „holiday-homification“ into daily life. It is time to answer 20th century‘s claim for efficiency with an ambience of relaxation. If you need to take work home, then home should be like holidays. Thus our proposal for Europan 11 attempts to integrate a maximum of holiday-like ambience into, an efficient, sustainable, and well connected housing-prototype that is embedded into a landscape devoted to slowness.

Diverse modes of public transport will enable inhabitants of “Kreekbos”-area to successively resign from the use of personally owned cars. Here pedestrian and bike-paths are superior to car-traffic. A discrete network is established. Therefore the existing roads through “Kreekbos” are interrupted to create undisturbed areas with a focus on the landscape qualities of the site. Pedestrian- and bike-traffic are embedded into this landscape. New roads are layed out as one-way ringroads; thus car-access to private homes is guaranteed, while it is not at the focus of our accessibility-concept. All houses are positioned along these one-way ring-roads. They are clustered in pairs of five units that revolve around a center. So each house is directed differently allowing for undisturbed views and a maximum feel of privacy while still being in a relative dense packing. Two distinct ambiences are created: the forest-villas that draw their atmosphere from being embedded into the forest. And next to that the “swamp-houses” that are laid upon the pond-system which literally is at the core of each housing-cluster.

Info:

Date: 2011

Place: Almere, The Netherlands

Size: ~250 m² each

Team: H.Hoffmann, D.Hake, Eirik Kjolsrud, Peter Zock

Status: competition

related Links:
www.europan.nl

is an office for architectural design that is based in düsseldorf, germany. it is led by daniela hake and holger hoffmann. the name one fine day suggests a positive basic attitude, idealism and ambition that is necessary to develop architecture beyond standard solutions. it is a claim to the speculative, the unforeseen and the exciting that we see at the core of architecture and design as a cultural discipline.we see ourselves as belonging to a younger generation of architects who are not so much swayed by traditional stylistic argument and the fixation on specific formal vocabularies.

we understand the tension between pragmatic needs and potential spatial, formal and material innovation as the opportunity to create an architecture that is specific in its application, appropriate in its effort and fascinating in its appearance. our aim is to deliver architectural projects that formulate a clear contemporary position combined with precise and long-lasting technical solutions embracing cutting edge methods of industrial production and innovative craft.one fine day handles state-of-the-art computer based design and building technologies. we have in-depth understanding of the latest complex design and modelling tools - but we do not feel obliged to apply these methods if unnecessary.

we are able to perform in ways as pragmatic as required, yet as elaborate and sophisticated as possible.while we understand ourselves as an office with a focus on architectural design one fine day possesses extensive experience in all phases of the production of architecture and urban planning. we are used to working in an international environment with sophisticated clients, tight schedules and complex tasks. for years we have been collaborating with highly specialized and professional offices and individuals worldwide - a reliable and flexible network tailored for out-of-the-box designs.therefore we understand ourselves as enthusiastic partners in a process of common effort with the aim to realize architecture that transcends the ordinary.