S333 Architecture + Urbanism

ITINERARY

Burton Hamfelt (Canadian), Christopher Moller (New Zealander), Dominic Papa and Jonathan Woodroffe (English) were winners of Europan 3, “At home in the city”, on the Groningen (NL) site. Their mixed housing project was completed in 2002.
They created their agency S333 in 1997 in Amsterdam, then a second in London in 2005. From the Europan experience, they deduce that housing is one of the key factors in urban planning when it comes to redefining the use of space and to promoting density and new lifestyles and working patterns.
They believe that the worldwide phenomenon of rapid urbanisation casts doubt on traditional town planning solutions. Buildings need to offer new combinations of functions. Architects need to find ways of involving other professionals in the design process.
Although housing and urban planning remained their core activity, S333 is increasingly involved in the design of educational complexes, mixed shopping developments and public amenities.

PERFORMANCE BASED URBANISM

Conditions that require new planning tools that set in motion locally intense but sporadic growth models. It is a multi-dimensional approach to planning the transformation of existing sites where in time, scale, mobility and strategic interventions both large scale and small scale are designed in place.

Grenoble (F) - Urban forest

The site in Grenoble asked to re-think the development of the city through new forms of intensification and change. The prize winning project, the ‘Urban Forest’ can be understood as an ‘urban ecology’ organised around seven distinct principles designed together to produce a critical urban density. The ‘Urban Forest’ is an attempt to grow a city. It takes advantage of the twofold potential of ‘vertical housing’ and a smaller scale colonisation of the ground as a transformation and growth strategy.

URBAN MATERIALITY

When local urban conditions are so demanding that the materiality and typological evolution of the building becomes a direct response to these specific conditions. It is about the design of the material interface at a level of raw neutrality. This raw neutrality (material and detail strategy) adapts itself as the building starts to relate and respond to the unique conditions on the site.

Almere (NL) - In between two contexts

The big growth of the city requires a new centre, composed of 12 new buildings, known as ‘blocks’. Block 7/9 is a 150 meter long, 4 storey building located in the north-west edge of the plan. The unique site demands an architectural and urban response that defines the borders of the centre, at the same time mediating between opposing urban conditions: old versus new city fabric, fast versus slow city movement, the lower parking level versus the raised shopping deck.

EDUCATION SPACE

When the idea of the isolated school campus where people can learn, work and research is usurped by the social interaction with the vitality of mature city fabric. This new form of Science park is the result of the enhanced synergy between hardware (buildings) software (education content) and brainware (knowledge creation) into robust urban form.

Singapore (MAL) - Ville parc

The driving objective for planning “One-north” is to shape an environment for decision-making and development that will promote the construction of a lively and distinctive next-generation science park based on a vibrant mix of live, work, play and learning environments. A special hybrid is invented to negotiate between the values of dense mixed uses urban fabric within the economic context of Singapore.

DENSITY HOUSING

Where uncompromising higher densities generate new spatial arrangements and living qualities in housing. Density in housing needs to break free of the dual conflicts between openness and intimacy, cars and green, individuality and diversity, private versus collective space.

Vijfhuizen (NL) - Density and irregularity

The project forms the first phase of a large Vinex urban plan for 700 new dwellings. The premise of the design offers an alternative way of living on Vinex sites where the housing plots are arranged to create a ‘field-like’ condition thanks to a ‘regular irregularity’ organisation. The spaces between the houses become varied, resolving the desire/conflict for privacy and openness through the explorative use of diagonal views from inside to outside.

Europan Generation, The reinterpreted city Catalogue
Editions: Cité de l’architecture and Europan, May 2007
224 colour pages, bilingual English/French


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