Visualisation © Compagnie O. Architects
Visualisation © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects
Dessin © Compagnie O. Architects

Group Housing Mechelen

 Retour à la liste des projets
Année
2018

This project presents, in many ways, a border situation. Continuing on an existing masterplan, the berm block, though located on a prominent location in a new park-like residential quarter, flanks the busiest railway connection in the world. This renders the building with a local, regional and international scope at the same time. The building demarks the border between the kinetic and the still – moreover, it is expected to function as a buffer or gradiënt between the two. The building thus becomes Janus-faced: defining the local identity of a neighbourhood on one side and embracing the regio-international reality of movement on the other. We consider both realities to be of equal potentiality to establish a site-specific living quality.

To allow for such an internal scale-jump, we propose a set of architectural interventions to the basic volume set by the masterplan: by cutting and spacing the overall volume and differentiating the park-facade (both horizontally and vertically), the building loses the connotation of a typical unified block of social housing. It rather becomes a set of seemingly autonomous entities that sit well in the residential context.
By duplicating the berm-facade and integrating a semi-subterranean parking pedestal, we optimize the specific contextual benefit of living in one of the stacked houses; the duplicated screen-facade on the side of the train provides an acoustically sound backside which lets in the evening sun, whilst the park pedestal is topped with park-faced terraces and cours anglaises, illuminating the neighbourhood parking with natural light.

The plan itself is developed as a Tetris of different typologies, allowing for a healthy mix of family compositions.

Autres projets de Compagnie O. Architects

Polyvalent Pavilion Brasschaat
Brasschaat, Belgique
Elementary School Melle
Melle, Belgique
Post Nuclear Necropolis Doel
Doel, Belgique
Safety Pavilion Knokke
Knokke-Heist, Belgique
New Administrative Center
Brasschaat, Belgique