The Netherlands is facing the problem of shortage of suitable housing. Predictions warn about the need of additional million houses for 2030. The rising number of immigrants arriving to the dutch capital city forced the municipality of Amsterdam to prepare a vision for Havenstad
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The Netherlands is facing the problem of shortage of suitable housing. Predictions warn about the need of additional million houses for 2030. The rising number of immigrants arriving to the dutch capital city forced the municipality of Amsterdam to prepare a vision for Havenstad 2050 - a development of industrial areas for the residential purposes. A big challenge and responsibility lies in the urban planning that would prepare the area towards the new function in the city. Hence the proposition of the urban plan for Minervahaven was one of the first confrontations with the area. High density that characterised it raised the question: how to organise the life of inhabitants in a way that the density wouldn’t be experienced? The research of Robin Dunbar, british anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, about the diversed relationships in groups of different numbers became my main inspiration and focus of interests for the graduation project. It influenced the organisation of the building and the decision to cluster people in communities of certain sizes to stimulate certain relationships by encounters between tenants. The final design is an attempt to find an answer for the lack of suitable family housing in the city and decreasing feeling of creating a community.