Sociale woningen Neerland

The Neerland project to the south of Antwerp is the result of cooperation between RE-ST and OM/AR and demonstrates what is possible when the qualities of the surroundings are made full use of. Encouraged by a master-plan for the whole site and a nature reserve that goes right up to the boundary of the plots, the architects determinedly opted to take the garden city as a point of reference. The residential zone in the project area comprises a mix of multi-family and single-family houses, 45 in total, divided over three blocks. One third is reserved for social housing. By deciding not to set rigid limits, but rather to let the volumes interact with the surroundings, they created an interwoven spatial structure. Architecture and landscape interlock and are linked together by high-quality transitions. In this project, abundant attention was paid to elements midway between private and public: the garden walls and communal bicycle shelters as integrated elements, the outdoor terraces with views of the nature reserve, front doors which, by means of the clever arrangement of the dwellings, open directly onto the public domain. The quality of these transitions is refreshing because in most social housing projects they receive far too little attention.

This text is based on the project text of the architects and the essay of Isabelle Blancke & Jürgen Vandewalle, which is published in the Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form