{"id":48015,"date":"2014-06-08T11:45:19","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T09:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/amsterdam-homogeneousinhomogeneous-silodam\/"},"modified":"2017-10-25T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T16:35:34","slug":"amsterdam-homogeneousinhomogeneous-silodam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/amsterdam-homogeneousinhomogeneous-silodam\/","title":{"rendered":"Amsterdam homogeneous\/inhomogeneous – Silodam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along a jetty in the Amsterdam Y\u2013river a mixed programme of 160 houses, offices, work spaces, commercial spaces and public spaces has been squeezed into a tight urban envelope. These elements involved four different clients: a housing developer, a housing corporation, a developer of workspaces and the city of Amsterdam. The extreme variety of requirements has been addressed by finding the \u2018common unit\u2019 within the programme: a series of \u2018mini-neighbourhoods\u2019, each consisting of 4-8 apartments each of which, as a reaction to increasing individualisation, tries to create a more social and safer living environment. Each neighbourhood has its own collective access principle to suit its requirements: a hall, a high corridor, a large balcony, an alley, a garden, a patio \u2013 each generating a specific housing type, structure and fa\u00e7ade. By stacking them independently next to and on top of each other, a system emerges of routes through the building. When mixed with workspaces and open zones, the result is a vertical neighbourhood, one that strives to give the apartments the feeling of being houses-with-gardens. At the main entrance, part of the building projects out over the water to form a public balcony, occupied by a restaurant offering a panoramic view back across the waters of the river Y towards the old centre. This restores the lost character of the jetty, a 270-degree perspective. The qualities, quantities and positions of each of the neighbourhoods were presented to the participants in a series of meetings. To stop this process from getting out of economical control, an optimum division of dwelling sizes was set up conforming to a \u2018Gaussian curve\u2019, so that the potential cacophony of the meetings could be restrained by economical considerations. The building can be seen as the \u2018frozen\u2019 result of the negotiations and therefore as a mirror of the political and economic situation.<\/p>\n