This scheme for a new housing development is situated in the medieval city of Maastricht. The development seeks to intensify the urban quality of the site without imitating the character of the pre-existing fabric.
The idiosyncratic site is spacious, surrounded by an amorphous mix of industrial buildings. The scheme creates a new square in the city formed from granite cobblestones. Trees soften the atmosphere, instilling a sense of tranquillity into the space.
One large building completes the west side of the existing open space, enclosing the square. Two four story buildings provide 52 dwellings; offset from one another they create a new pedestrian link to the city.
Ground level units are entered directly from the square. Three vertical circulation cores and external galleries on each floor provide access to upper level units.
Dwellings are not articulated as individual elements but as an abstract layered whole, unified behind a screen of varnished cedar. Galleries and individual balconies are minimally detailed. A colonnade demarcates public and private, extending across the facade of the existing housing on the south side of the new square, knitting together the old with the new.
Rather than a merely additive collection of separate entities, the housing is conceptualised as a collective that sustains the square and which, in turn, is sustained by the square.