Kraaihoek–Noord, Papendrecht • 1996 – 2000,
170 luxury houses
Client: Moes Projectontwikkeling, Almere

As a consequence of a new wave of expansion in the seventies and eighties, Kraaihoek-Noord, the first post-war expansion suburb to the north of Rotterdam, now finds itself in a central position. A characteristic feature of the Kraaihoek-Noord area is that it actually consists of a number of zones, each with its own ambience. The central zone has a stamen-shaped parcelling that supports serial single-family houses. The fringes display functions and construction on a larger scale on the north side, a through road to the centre, an area with small-scale construction in the green zone on the east side, and a park on the west side.
In the substantiation of the zones, the specific qualities of the areas have been preserved, and the central area has been left intact as a residential quarter.
A small-scale village that harmonizes with the surrounding construction was designed along the Veerweg. Detached housing blocks, 2, 3 or 4 storeys high, offer a great variety of housing types in a zone of relatively high construction density. The housing blocks lie on east-west-oriented strips on a regular grid. The existing side streets have been retained between the strips, and a number of slow-traffic routes have been added.
Within each strip, the blocks are interconnected by garden walls or elevated platforms. The elevation and the material use furnish these platforms with the character of a semi-public court. The platforms and gardens have no storage areas, these have been accommodated in the houses themselves. Four-storey blocks, each containing 2 houses, have been situated along the Veerweg, forming a perforated urban façade.
Coherence in the area has been achieved by using the same elements and materials in all the buildings. They consist of brick, clear-varnished wood, modest façades, layered façade openings, and white stucco-work fronts on the garden side. On the ground floor, the entrances to the houses on the through roads have been delineated by a concrete frame. The filling of this frame varies from house to house but consistently forms the transitional area from the public to the private domain in all the houses.