The mass of solid Rapp and Rapp for mixed use development YPENBURG, a new neighborhood located in a former NATO airfield near The Hague, it is easy for the suburban area of life, reports BIQ architects Hans van der Heijden
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO airfield YPENBURG was declared surplus by the Dutch government and internally developed a new neighborhood. Physically, the airfield has shown little historical depth: a field of grass with barracks, hangars, and more surprisingly, a 2 km-long concrete runway. The empty place, particularly in the context of the density of Dutch Randstad was the most powerful architectural feature.
The new neighborhood, YPENBURG, is designed as an urban area between the towns of Delft and The Hague. It includes a linear public space, with different "camps" between the two.
Masterplanner Frits Palmboom said: "The urban environment creates the conditions that would later be collected by the architecture. But this is more than just a grid of lines and public space. It has its own architectural dimension and a tangible way."
Palmboom framework is designed and made very little use of the relics of the former military landscape. Only the former track can be recognized, and then only in a metaphorical sense: a trace of the runway of the fingerprint is included in the plan, but the monster reinforced concrete has disappeared.
The housing development was carried out by teams of developers and designers, production of a heterogeneous. However, the YPENBURG masterplanners tried to impose the same basic tone in each area. For each of them, a concept plan was provided in the public space, housing type, block design and even the color and materials have been carefully described - a strategy that Palmboom described as a "package of difference."
However, each area are still trying to surprise the market with its own brand or illusion that is simpler than discontinuity in style. To mention just a few extremes, we find banal, ironic Lego houses by MVRDV, the formal experiments in Van Gamer Mastenbroek and laconic palace architecture of the West 8. It remains doubtful that Palmboom of the urban environment has been strong enough to undertake such an explicit expression of market diversification.
YPENBURG the center has also been defined as a "field", and was among the last to be created. The architectural design by Rapp and Rapp avoids the internalization of the surrounding areas. The architect has opted for a set of nine blocks carefully closed the perimeter, which relate to the YPENBURG urban environment.
The size of the blocks correspond to those of neighboring buildings and the main street running through the plan is an extension of a small street that feeds inside the far west of the site. It is bordered by a supermarket, other department stores, Social and Cultural Rights, and a gym.
All the parking spaces for shoppers on the streets and are directly in front of shops. The largest parking area is large enough to host a weekly market.
The blocks along the southern coast of the street through a series of long, in the form of wedge seats that offer a view recently excavated lake. Most of these spaces on the plan cónica to address the lake, the introduction of a false sense of perspective. However, the biggest - to the tram which connects YPENBURG in The Hague - opens in sight, pointing to the "nature" in connection with the everyday experience of the mall. The neutral, repetitive quality of the facades is outweighed by the surreal effects generated by the plan.
The south building has a large semi-circle around the lake.
In a very smart, this gesture is a step back from the street that runs through the plantations are located on each side. The corners of the succession neighbors are attracted to the urban composition of Rapp and Rapp of the project, highlighting the situation of the community center for the entire area. All these options suggest a matter of fact acceptance of the normality of the periphery - YPENBURG inevitably something else.
Increase the slender tower of blocks from the blocks lower. They are in the apparent casualness, vary in height and are limited by a different character brick glass penthouses. At night, a team that generates a sculpture of light between them.
Within the courts, most of which are accessible by residents, are proportionate and grandly doubled in Padoek, a hardwood from Africa. Its height is more articulated by a bridge of access to secondary, which has the support of large steel columns. The bridges are of a scale that allows them to double in terraces, and, therefore, each dish has always been a double row of doors.
Rapp and Rapp of the proposal responds to the complexity of urban conditions with a high degree of simplicity YPENBURG is also useful because it is sensitive. The margin of negotiating the strategic plan is in the architectural scale, the scale between retail and urban design. During the development of the project, a series of surveys were carried out on such issues as the mix of house trading program of housing types and number of parking solutions; runners tie for the shops and so far, without further debate on the regime of living space "recipe".
Once all these issues are decided, the architects have tried the choice of materials and means of assembly. Most of the facades of the street seem precast concrete foundations and lintels, with orange bricks between the two. The panel of return jumps to 50 mm on each floor, while the window frames remain in the same alignment. Therefore, the window displays to reduce the size of the bottom up, ready for facades degree "robust dimensions. In the corner, the improvement is considered particularly strong.
In tectonic terms, the project is very high thanks to the supervision of the architect has had in its construction. Rapp and Rapp working drawings are not overweight or innovation offensive, but the practice was very clever use of what is left room to maneuver in the conventions of the industry today. In this aspect of the project, too, we have a commitment to the forefront of everyday normalcy. More importantly, the practice has designed the exterior of self-supporting concrete panels sockets are set on one another, masonry and rests on top. The Mass has become uncommon in practice the construction, especially in countries like the Netherlands and Britain. In YPENBURG, things are always what they seem, and the level of court that was achieved is exceptional.
The original plan foresaw YPENBURG as a center of a huge superblock, but Rapp and Rapp argued against this approach on the basis that the project of great size - is four times greater than the Pireo, famous Amsterdam, Christian Rapp, in association with Hans Kollhoff - isolating it from surrounding urban fabric.
And yet at the same time near the grain of adjacent houses, all forms, however, a large urban unit. The composition of Piraeus is derived from the articulation of the unification of a "great shape" - der Grossform in German - and not its constituent elements such as individual houses. Piraeus gives the impression of having been formed through a process of cutting a large solid mass. In YPENBURG, this approach is tested on the urban scale. The big way in this case is the district as a whole in the corners that have been carved and the towers have been added.
Again, no attempt is made to the articulation of the various houses. Thanks to the carved spaces, attached to all urban YPENBURG, becoming part of the reality of the new suburbs.
Rapp and Rapp did not fall into the trap of adding a new building in the icon of architecture and YPENBURG rich catalog. If there is an icon on this project, not its purpose, but the quality of the atmosphere in the form of public spaces, buildings and even the light sculpture, the creation of a joint effort.
Hans van der Heijden is an architect and director of a Rotterdam-based practice BIQ.
