Summary

1 BUILDING DESCRIPTION

2 ANALYSE OF THE SITE

3 THE 6 PERSPECTIVES

4 NEIGHBOORS

1. Building description

This housing project is composed of 2 buildings, a courtyard building ( HOOGKWERF), and a bar (HOOGKARG).

• Hoogkwerf is composed of 45 appartments

• This building has 7 floors, of which the ground floor is devoted to commercial space, and the six others to dewelling units.


• the structural material is reinforced concrete and the facing material is red brick. The cladding of the courtyard facade is made of blue tyles.
  

• The structure, which isn't innovative, is composed of seven parallel load bearing walls in reinforced concrete.

• In Hoogkwerf, green areas are not part of the building, but surround it in most sides.
  
• Nevertheless, open spaces (the courtyard) define the building which is inspired by Palazzo Piccolomini, in Pienza. The courtyard is 15 x 20 meter, in the heart of the building.

• The ceiling height is 2.8m in the average floors, and 3.5m in the ground floor.



• The organization scheme of the building is as follows: a central courtyard surrounded by an exterior corridor (one at each floor). This corridor system allows to use only 2 vertical circulation cores. The servant spaces of the appartments (kitchens, bathrooms, entrance halls), are located around the courtyard, freeing the exterior facades for the main private spaces. Each flat is composed of tree rooms of equal size, with free function. All the appartments are bigger than 100m², superior to the dutch medium.

vertical circulation in the building. Apartments (red), commercial space (yellow), and artist studios (pink).

• Hoogkarg, the bar, is the most important part of the housing program: 124 metre long, 26 m wide, 25 m high, 180 parking places, 127 dwelling units.

• This building is 1 floor higher than the Hoogkwerf. There is no commercial space in this building, only living space, parking lots and storages.



• The materials include strutural reinforced concrete and red brick on the facades, creating harmony with the Hoogkwerf.


• In the Hogkart, an important green area is part of the design, and the volume of the building is modelled to emphatize this space, which is also used as an entrance filter and as a bike parking.


• The corresponding space back from the building line on the other side of the building is a public terrace overlooking a channel.
  
• Ceiling heights are equal as in the Hoogkwerf building.


• The organisation scheme is more traditionnal: Flats are of two types: family flats and studios.

2. Site description

Amsterdam and the Java Eiland.

. Amsterdam, the capital of Netherlands, is a metropolis where 1,468,120 people live.

. The city is 219 km², of which 53 km² of water. The population density is 4,459/km².It is one of the main port cities on the North Sea and is known for its canals and islands, which have led to Amsterdam being termed the "Venice of the North".

.One of the main development areas of the past years has been the Eastern Docklands, where Java Eiland is located, and now home to our case study.





History of the Eastern Islands:

At the end of the nineteen seventies the municipal authorities of Amsterdam decided to stop the exodus of residents from the City. For that reason locations were sought where houses could be built to help retain the existing population and attract new residents as well. The Oostelijk Havengebied (the Eastern Docklands), the market-gardening areas of Sloten and the Middenveldsche Akerpolder were designated for house construction. The Oostelijk Havengebied consists of artificial peninsulas that were constructed between 1874 and 1927. In the seventies the port activities which took place here were relocated to the western dock area of the city. At the same time the Amsterdam City Council decided to develop this area. Between 1987 and 2003 some 8000 dwellings, shops and offices have been realised here.
The Java and KNSM islands, once separated pieces of land that have been joined, were located in this development area. Between 1995 and 1998 a total of 1357 houses and around 5000 square meters of office space were built in the Java Eiland.



Planning of Java-KNSM area in the 90s:

KNSM Jo Coenens' Masterplan for KNSM-island- provided big buildings, referring to the harbour scale. The buildings which accord to one block are among others the "Piraeus" from Hans Kollhoff and Christian Rapp and the "SkyDome" from Wiel Arets. At KNSM there are still traces of the old harbour history to be found. Apart from houses for retired captains and former administration buildings of the shipping companies also a the passenger terminal dating from the sixties is still to be seen. Additional to the predominating housing small galleries, shops, cafes and boot-workshops can be found.






JAVA-EILAND On the eastern part of the island a different strategy has been followed. The old houses were entirely torn down, before an urban and small scale housing district after plans of Sjoerd Soeters was built. The big housing blocs with intimate yards are structured by small canals referring to the flair of the Amsterdam city centre. The buildings designed by different architects are repeated in each of the urban blocs in varying positions. Java-eiland is now an almost 2-kilometer-long (1.2 mile) exhibition space for Dutch architects. The housing project of the Swiss architects Diener and Diener links Java and KNSM within the urban plan. The Jan Schaefer bridge from Venhoeven CS connects Java island to the city centre. All This area is now a residential quarter for young professionals.

3. The 6 perspectives

Inhabitants of Java Eiland apartment building are oriented towards the outside. Glazad façades and loggias overlook the Amsterdam harbour and the parks of the island, and the internal core of the apartments is home of the service spaces. In the Hoogkwerf building, the flexibility of the plan alloows multiple uses, and the flat can therefore reflect individual tastes and disires, whereas the Hoogkark plan is more traditional, divided in a day area and a night area.



The building provides several layers of elements that create a community around it:

1 The site and the façades. The buildings are easily recognizable from a distance, and their appearance is very similar. Inhabitants can feel as owners of a landmark.

2The Hoogkwerf building is comosed around a collective semi public courtyard, meeting point of the collectivity. Each floor has an exterior corridor which overlooks this area, and inside the apartment the service areas are located around the courtyard, adding a filter between the collective spaces and the private areas.

3The Hoogkark provides much less meeting places, since dwellings are almost directly connected to public spaces.

The project is located at the entrance of Java and KNSM islands. The architectes decides to build two Buildingsn one on each island, with the main road between them. The presence of the





This project doesn't offer new possibilities in matters of environement (so recicling system, no solar energy...). Nevertheless, nature penetrates the buildings, literally in the courtyards and with the presence surrounding the builings. The great openings of the flats bring the urban and natural landscapes to become a part of the daily life of the owners.


Java Eiland Apartment building uses a service core in Hoogkwerk and a service wall in Hoogkarg. The groupment of all the service areas allows a greater flexibility for the major spaces, and the possibility to enjoy a maximum of the views. From the construction point of view, Hoogkwerk is composed of a series of parallel load bearing walls running east-west, in Hoogkarg walls run in the North-south direction, orientating all the appartments towards the park or the water.




The buildings are located between Java and KNSM Islands, an area that has undergone a major urban development in the 1990s. Java Eiland urban design is composed of small built parcels, brtween quays and interior gardens. Channels were dug, in order to remind the historical center urban fabric. KNSM is composed of large scale buildings, that are to remind the previous function of the site, part of the city’s docklands. The Diener and Diener project is medium scale, serving as an entrance gate to this new area.

Neighbors, Neighborhood, Neighbouring

The courtyard building is composed of 45 flats, and the flats all use the same typology, but the absence of hierarchy permits a very different use of the spaces according to the users needs. We can then easily imagine that in this building can be found single young professionals, families with 1 or 2 children, students…
The bar is more densely occupied (127 dwelling units), and the apartment plans are more traditional. We can find 3 rooms apartments (small family type) and another typology, the "maisonette", little houses inside of the building (at the south east and south west corners), in which we can imagine groups of students, large families… What we can criticize in this bar is the absence of commercial space, and the lack of public areas, especially for a building of this size.
The diagram shows an interesting aspect of the Hogkwerf: the apartments are very open towards the outside, but visitors have to go through a number of spatial filters in order to det to the flats; creating an interessing privacy relationship.

The Diener & Diener ‘s buildings are located at the entrance of the KNSM-Java Eiland neighbourhood, a gentrified area on Amsterdam's ex-docklands. The Hogkarg seats on Java and the Hogkwerf is in the KNSM side. Each building announces the island to which it belongs, by using the island’s typology (a thin building standing on channels-water in Java Eiland, and a block with a inner courtyard in KNSM. The materials and façade designs are very similar, and links the buildings and the islands.

The Hogkarg and the Hogkwerf have very different neighbouring properties, and community relations don’t exist between the buildings. Inside of the Hogkarg, the only collective spaces are the circulation cores, which are designed to be minimal. We can hardly imagine the neighboring relationship inside of the building. On the other hand the design of the Hogkwerf seems able to enhance relations between its inhabitants. The courtyard-external corridors allows a community life.