Sociale woningen Schaerdeke

The Schaerdeke social housing project comprises sixteen owner-occupied and rental homes. It grew organically out of its environment and seems to merge with the existing picturesque interplay of Lo-Reninge. Here, the built context is used as a range of locally-related elements from which one could or had to choose. The combination of two dwellings under one roof is a middle course between the fine grain of the dense central core on the one hand, and on the other, the coarser grain of urban extensions located farther out. The green inner garden between the straight and curved dwellings acts as a social motor for encounters between the residents and connects directly with the public road. The spatial structure is somewhat unorthodox, but is in line with the characteristic medieval centre, where the built elements appear to be offset with regard to each other. To give one example, the gateway to a meadow may turn up between two terraced houses. The columns for the entrances could be seen as objets trouvés from the old town hall and they symbolically emphasise that a social housing project can also be locally oriented within the grid set out by the administrative authorities.

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