Post-war duplex housing in courtyard configuration

Abstract

The graduation studio ‘Housing as heritage’, within the chair of Restoration, Modification, Intervention and Transformation (®MIT), deals with complex social issues and degeneration processes of post-war housing neighborhoods. This graduation project in particular aims at a strategy for phased revitalization of post-war ground bound duplex housing towards adaptive neighborhoods by means of using an innovative modification strategy called the second skin. The Western Garden Cities of Amsterdam built in the rebuilt period after the Second World War, which is one of the biggest extension plans in the Netherlands erected, faces complex social issues and degeneration. Current restructuring plans are put on hold due to the new economic situation for which corporations have generally minimalized their activities into management and maintenance. Slotermeer, as being one of these areas, erected as one of the first parts of the General Expansion Plan (AUP, Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan) is mostly retained by the urban renewal period. Plans were made to regenerate the area by means of large scale demolishment and building new housing estate, in which this could foresee in a more differentiated housing stock as one of the key arguments to solve further degeneration. One part of the stock seen as problematic by several stakeholders like the housing corporation and the municipality, is the duplex housing, which forms about twenty percent of the number of dwellings in Slotermeer. Several enclaves are conducted as duplexed ground-bound single family housing in courtyard configurations. In time of erection these were meant as a temporary solution to overcome the housing shortage. After ten years the duplex dwellings would be simplexed which until this day in general did not occur. Over time, due to the filtering down process, their position on the housing market changed. Nowadays, therefore these areas are mainly characterized by small and degenerated typologies with relatively cheap rents and inhabitants with low financial potential in which there is a high mutation rate in change of tenants. One of these neighborhoods, the case study for the graduation assignment, is the Roland Holstbuurt. It represents the typical abstract of the development of duplex housing in a post war urban setting through time. This graduation project tried to find an answer on how to deal with these areas by means of innovative architectural revitalization strategies anchored in the historical context. In the first quarter thorough research on the duplex strategy and the Roland Holstbuurt since the erection to the initial future plans, on urban, architectural and technical scale was elaborated as input for second phase of design for research. In this phase a spatial architectural strategy was developed and simulated on the case, in which the key element is the transformation towards an adaptive neighborhood. By means of the use of a second skin not only the existing housing is revitalized without comprising the existing homes and their inhabitants, it also adds the possibility to individually change and upgrade each dwelling in itself over time. In which several forms of stock management can be used or combined allowing duplex housing neighborhoods to become and maintain adaptive and attractive neighborhoods over the course of time.