Celebrating the study trip to the Netherlands, it would be highly appropriate if the precedent review would be of buildings from the country, some architecture viewed and analysed along the 5-day journey around Holland, hence presenting the Wozoco Apartment.
Wozoco Apartment lays on the outskirts of Amsterdam and designed by MVRDV Architects. Commissioned by Het Oosten Housing Association , this housing accommodates 100 flats that are occupied by elderly of the area. Disguised as an apartment rather than an old folks home or a nursing home, it distracts from the cliche image of a centre where old people live with caretakers around to care and nurse them in a hospital-like environment.
The original plan by Cornelis Van Eesteren regulated 87 units of apartments per block, where each tenant is promised natural good lighting. Then, the client requested the number of units to be increased by 13 to 100. It proved to be a challenge as the idea to accommodate 13 additional units would have to occupy another floor, a feature that would limit the green common space. Hence, the design of the building, deemed to be provocative and simply original.
The design of the building includes extruding elements from a single box of a building, creating "hanging" structures to the back and front, that would actually place the additional units of flats. Apartments facing the back of the building is completed with a verandah each, with various elements of panels, colors and structures to enhance individuality of each unit. Such feature, random as it seems with some verandah extruding out from cantilevered elements, manage to appear organized as different colors of panels compliment each other with a bold hint of playfulness, shying away from the impressions of old age and death, ironic to its design of modern and contemporary.
The back of the building spreads a garden of flat space, enhancing the quality of light into the verandahs of the flats, cantilevered or not. These would also benefit residences to have a better view, as adjacent buildings to the Wozoco Apartment were low structures that accommodate nurses and caretakers of the old folks in the apartment. The front of the flat, on the other hand is covered with glass panels and wooden cladding on its cantilevered structures, simple without any complexion.
Wozoco Apartment is intriguing as an idea of a modern design that accommodate seniors, two elements that contrast yet compliment each other. The design is also amazing as a structural execution where big elements that cantilever on both sides of the buildings would be able to hold and even accommodate a few apartments. I find myself intrigued by the design and is amazed by its simplicity and complexity that appear to create high aesthetic value and its honesty to appear beautiful without any internal statement where it tries to be meaningful and deep.
Images taken from http://www.e-architect.co.uk/amsterdam/wozoco_mvrdv.htm
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