Concept.
According to the task of social housing company Wonberdrijf it was meant to design 8 family eco houses and 21 apartment residential building for Turkish retired people on the site of formar primary school in Doornakkers, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. This is how concept 60+30- was born. The idea of lifehack concept was to design a place where two “opposite” groups (oldies+youngsters) would be put into a sole community. The manifesto of the project is “share&care”. Sustainability of such community is based on solidarity activity which is architecturally (spatially) organized for this proposal.
The design of dense built environment was aimed to create active information exchange between habitants. Urban farming as an activity for outdoors was also programmed to contribute to a positive process of making people feel belonged to the place they live. To make it more urban friendly, the former playground space of the school is divided into series of cosy semi-private yards aimed for family houses. The other public spaces were concentrated in front of senior apartment building and between buildings where small “information spot” spaces were meant to “connect” inhabitants of the area. The orientation of the family houses was made to avoid direct staring “window to window” and also to “involve” the view into the public life [square] in front.
One of the ideas for family houses was adaptivity. The ground level of the house was lifted up to the first floor and empty space was left underneath the house. This space could be used as urban farming garden, garage, new room, etc. Spatial organization of the house also included the possibility to change the space in width due to the window sliding constructions.
As for parking places they were put on the outline of the area and all pedestrian paths and public spaces were concentrated inside the block.
The architectural performance of the houses refers firstly to Austrian Philips houses that are next street to San Fransiscus school. Secondly, treehouse like dwellings connected between each other depict an idea of keeping ”inner child” in its habitant and feeling free from any causing prejudice background individual can have. As the process of involving Turkish community has been started, the idea is develop ethnical and as a consequence cultural variety. Common dinners with exchanging recipes and urban farming with sharing origin-country crops can contribute to a warm atmosphere of friendship in the neighborhood.
Such approach where not only design but scenario of living in the community was proposed was aimed to make neighborhood friendly, sustainable and tolerant to its inhabitants. The idea is also to unite people of different ethnicity and cultural background.
