De Bongerd Garden Suburb
High quality of life in a high-density city
The rise in urban density has created an ongoing challenge to provide highly liveable accommodation to the growing global population of urban dwellers. This challenge is further complicated by the tendency for new developments to reinforce socio-demographic divisions by creating homogeneous enclaves. It was with this in mind that Paul de Ruiter Architects approached the commission to design a new neighbourhood in the northern borough of Amsterdam. Our thinking produced De Bongerd Garden Suburb, a neighbourhood of mixed housing types with a total of 1,600 apartments. We designed 70% of these for the owner-occupied segment and 30% as social housing. The mix has been instrumental in ensuring the diversity of the neighbourhood, which boasts families of all sizes from across the socio-economic and life-stage spectrum.
Innovative approach to high-density living
We designed de Bongerd along the lines of a garden suburb, which may be defined as a planned residential community in a park-like setting. However, with space at a premium in Amsterdam, we adapted the idea to provide as many apartments as possible on each plot without compromising liveability. Thus, while the standard new housing development (known in the Netherlands as Vinex neighbourhoods) usually offers about 30 apartments per hectare, we were able to accommodate 62. And we did this while giving each apartment its own ground floor entrance, so that every household could feel connected to their street and to the neighbourhood. Private front doors also avoided the need for a homeowners’ association.
The luxury of a garden in a congested city
One of our goals in designing the owner-occupied, four-apartment units was to give each home as large a garden as possible. We designed a variety of these units, each in the form of a quadrant, with one multi-storey apartment per quadrant, spread across three floors and boasting a private roof terrace and street-level garden. Their façades are designed to admit lots of daylight and offer generous views of the gardens. The blank sections of the facades feature wooden trellises, to encourage the cultivation of vines in the hope that these sections will eventually be covered in lush vegetation.
Project details
Gegevens
| Location | Appelbuurt, Amsterdam North |
| Amount of dwellings | 1,600 |
| Total floor area | 80 m² to 140 m² per apartment |
| Project description | Mix of owner-occupied and social housing in blocks of four multi-storey apartments with private ground floor entrances |
| Start of design | 2002 |
| Start of construction | 2005 |
| Completion | 2007 |
Ontwerpteam
| Client | Municipality of Amsterdam, Borough of Amsterdam Noord and De Bongerd development consortium |
| Project architect | Paul de Ruiter |
| Project team | Helga Traksel, Dieter Blok |
| Construction consultant | BAM Woningbouw |
| Building services engineering | Reuser Technisch Adviesbureau |
| Landscape architect | Karres + Brands Landschapsarchitecten |
| Urban planning | Rudy Uytenhaak + Partners Architecten |
| Contractor | BAM Woningbouw |
| Others involved | Sambeek & Van Veen, Heren 5 Architecten |
| Photography | Pieter Kers |
