Ringvaartplasbuurt Oost is an urban plan for 550 dwellings, adjacent to the Jacques Dutilhweg and near a small lake in Rotterdam. To create the feeling of a ‘garden’ city, the architecture and the public space have a high tactile factor and experiential quality.
It is a neighbourhood with a variety of materials, textures, scents and colours creating a community where you can enjoy and experience, with a strong imaginative narrative.
The concept is realised as an ‘architectural choreography’ in which carefully detailed blocks of stucco and terracotta clad housing are the gracious dancers, creating new spaces in the voids.
The plan consists of five quadrants: four identical quadrants, each with a green corridor; and a quadrant with high rise flats marking the neighbourhood like a church spire. Residential paths run between the different quadrants and four distinctive collective gardens, each planted in a different style: French, Dutch, Japanese and English. Space for the collective gardens has been created by placing the buildings unconventionally close to the edge of the lake.
The composition of buildings in this neighbourhood and the variety of urban space can be interpreted as a manifesto against the monotony and against the lack of interest in public space in urban expansion schemes of this kind.