• Project: architecture, research, renovation
• Program: collective housing
• Designteam: Duzan Doepel, Harmen van de Wal, Smahan Amrach, Pe How Tong
• researchteam: Machiel van Dorst (TUD), Duzan Doepel, Harmen van de Wal
• commission: Wimby!
• Location: Rotterdam
• Start design February 2004

This project has been carried out within the framework of Wimby! (welcome in my backyard). It was a research resulting in a design sketch to the possibilities of post war gallery flat apartment buildings. In Hoogvliet, a part of Rotterdam, are four maisonette apartment buildings. Built in the fifties of the last century they are still physically in a good shape. Socially though, they are ill accepted.

This created the opportunity to use the buildings for groups of people who normally cannot realize their ambitions in the housing market. Collectives of teenage mothers, seniors and others will be provided with new homes. Highly

In collaboration with Duzan Doepel we did a research on the consequences this would have on the physical structure. One of the main conclusions was that the structure, being too rigid in it’s use, could provide more freedom by just a few well chosen changes. This would give the inhabitants the opportunity to meet or not meet each other, thus enabling their own free will in their privacy management.

Tags: architecture, housing, reconversion, sustainable