‘Unexpected’ Domesticity: The Oost III Housing Project in IJ-plein Amsterdam Urban Plan by Rem Koolhaas/OMA (1980-1988)

Abstract

In Amsterdam Nord, on the banks of the IJ, is located IJ-plein, the urban plan designed and built between 1980 and 1988, by a team led by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. From this extensive urban plan, which was devoted entirely to social housing and included education and leisure programmes, this research draws attention to the Oost III section, located on the easter end side of the plan. The Oost III buildings were also designed by Koolhaas/OMA and consist of mainly two housing blocks: a larger one facing a wharf, which is elevated on a podium and pilotis where other programmes are included, and a short one behind.
The Oost III blocks comprise many different types of housing, which ranged from two to five rooms, and include also a large collective unit for mentally handicapped. Of these, the smallest housing are the so-called ‘HAT’ units, a novelty in response to the initiative launched in 1975 by the state secretary of Volkshuisvesting en Ruimtelijke ordening, to deal with the problem of affordable housing for singles or pairs, in the nota ‘Huisvesting Alleenstaanden en Tweepersoonshuishoudens’. This paper addresses the design of the Oost III in relation to the ‘HAT’ units: could the smallest units offer another lecture on this section of IJ-plein?
The domesticity of the ‘HAT’ units, of their materiality and their subjects, shows the extent to which they challenge the inherent meanings and understanding of housing architecture when the family is no longer the norm, with all that this entails. Here, ‘unexpected’ domesticity refers to the concept of ‘housing the unpredictable’, in other words, the multiple possible realities of home life. This concept is explored at the different scales of the Oost III urban section: the ‘HAT’ housing unit; the interior spaces of the blocks that connect these units, such as the access system; and the exterior spaces of this urban plan. For an ever-changing society, a particular reinterpretation of modern precedents embraced the new.