Lelycentre

Abstract

Lelycentre – an area that was initially planned as a living, working and shopping district, which also would form the city centre of Lelystad – was meant for the first inhabitants who came to Lelystad in September 1967. Using clear zoning plans as a base, much was promised to the new inhabitants. These promises consisted of low rise houses for big families with children, surrounded by abundance of greenery, plenty of (public) space and – as one of the first in the Netherlands – separated traffic. Unfortunately, with altering the layout of Lelystad and moving the city centre away from Lelycentre, as a result of the refusal of realising the fourth polder Markermeer, this composition of different functions has radically changed and this changing is still ongoing. With the changing of composition, also the state of the area and the inhabitants changed. Of the 120.000 expected inhabitants, only 77.000 came at its peak. This resulted in lots of real estate as well as social problems, such as vacancy, neglection of public spaces, isolated groups with no interaction and a constantly aging population, accompanied by the migrating youth, which the municipality of Lelystad is, still to this day, trying to deal with. Amidst all the solutions the municipality is envisioning – which are strongly focused on helping the inhabitants with low-income with social-housing and the elderly with nursing homes – they are forgetting two important groups in the society. Those two groups are the migrating youngster – who find it difficult to find decent housing and jobs – and the wandering migrant workers, who likewise find it difficult to find proper housing and often end up with twenty-plus people living in private rented houses all over Lelystad. This graduation project focuses on those two forgotten groups. Transforming the partly vacant Smedinghuis – former Rijkswaterstaat office building – which stands in the area as a monumental icon and functions as a gateway to Lelycentre, into housing for the youngsters and the migrant workers, will not just give those two forgotten groups fitting housing, but it will also solve the vacancy problem of one of the first office buildings in Lelycentre. By giving the migrating youngsters proper housing and give them reason to stay, will help repulse the aging problem in the area as well. The same applies for housing the strayed migrant workers. Adjoining to that – which is not less important – this transformation will preserve a monumental icon in the area; Smedinghuis. For the design part of this graduation project, the use of Virtual Reality as a design tool was important. With the help of Virtual Reality crucial design decisions have been made.