A sculptural residence
The Housing Festival in the Hague, on a master plan designed by OMA, involved construction on a narrow strip of roughly forty metres wide on one side of the Morgenstond housing estate. The urban design concept revolved around transparency: buildings, designed by different architects, were to be arranged as separate volumes with glimpses of greenery visible between them. Our design was for a very compact, blunt ‘tower’ as prescribed by the master plan. In fact it is not so much a tower as a solid piece of sculpture which somehow suggests a pigeon with ruffled feathers.
The building has a semi-submerged basement containing storage compartments, above which there are nine floors with four apartments each. The two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments are accessed via a central vestibule which contains the lifts and escape stairs. Every apartment as a living room at one outer corner of the building, thus enjoying a view in two directions. Steel balconies supported on struts are mounted on the corners. These feathery balconies give the building something birdlike but a little clumsy – the paradoxical charm of a young pigeon which has not yet taken its first flight.
Housing festival
The Hague
Een dikke duif met kleine vleugeltjes in de vorm van verspringende beglaasde balkons. Hoe hoger, hoe meer wind en hoe meer glas.