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Chassé Park Apartments
Chassé Park Apartments- © XDGA, photo Petra Stavast
Chassé Park Apartments
A former military base in the centre of Breda has been reclaimed by the city. It is a green area with a series of large buildings with varying functions on the city side. The development plan by OMA comprises a public park in which a series of varied residential buildings are set individually, placing the surrounding buildings in a new context. A series of through views and entrances into the park have also been created.
One group consists of a series of five residential towers on top of a parking ring, which surrounds a sunken inner garden – also public. The entrances to each of the towers open onto the garden. The parking ring rises 1.5 meters above ground level and is partly transparent, while hillocks are included in the inner garden, which rise in turn above the parking roof.
The towers are located close together, each with its own orientation. Their position relative to one another is determined by factors such as the view outwards and inwards, exposure to sunlight, transparency and the definition of the inner zone. Three of the five towers have two apartments per storey, the fourth one and the fifth four. The varying relative position of the towers creates small differences in ground plans and elevations. All the apartments have a large veranda, which can be used as an external space, a separate room or as part of the living room. The materials are limited to glass, prefabricated concrete panels inlaid with slate and glazed white bricks for the façades. The garage roof is made of translucent polyester, while a concrete framework acts as the support structure behind the glass curtain walls.
MIES VAN DER ROHE AWARD 2003, nomination
A former military base in the centre of Breda has been reclaimed by the city. It is a green area with a series of large buildings with varying functions on the city side. The development …
- © XDGA, photo Wim Ruigrok
- © XDGA
- website_XDGA_plan_app_1x2
- website_XDGA_plan_app_loggia
- © XDGA, photo Hans Werlemann
- © XDGA, photo Gilbert Fastenaekens
- © XDGA, photo Gilbert Fastenaekens
- © XDGA, photo Petra Stavast
- PS_10-6_500x619
- © XDGA, photo Gilbert Fastenaekens
1996-2001007 Chassé Park Apartments
commission, built
CityBreda
Programfive towers with 137 apartments and car park
Year1996-2001
Procedurecommission
Statusbuilt
ClientChassé CV, joint venture Proper Stok Woningen and Wilma Bouw
Total floor area23.000 m²
Budget18.562.180 €
LandscapeWest8
Structural engineerSnellen, Meulemans & Van Schaaik
PhotographsHans Werlemann, Gilbert Fastenaekens, Petra Stavast
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Statement
Ideally architecture is not about fixing activities, fluxes or programs, or worse, about solving spatial problems. On the contrary, it is about opening up possibilities: the potential of a site, the hidden opportunity of a particular situation in time, of a programmatic conflict. It is about dealing with uncertainty, about enabling different and unforeseen scenarios.
In that sense architecture and urbanism are not opposed disciplines with different outcomes, but similar mediators, on different scales and in different degrees of complexity, with the same goal of enabling life.
The basis for architecture in our way of working is to carry out a meticulous scanning of a brief, a program or a context. Context not just as that what physically surrounds a project, but the larger field of social, economic, political, administrative and also technical issues, all on an equal level. This activity of accurate and systematic reading leads to a matrix of knowledge that frames any architectural decision. Sometimes this framework functions as a backdrop for postponed intuitions, sometimes it forms the battlefield for a bombardment of architectural proposals that slowly gain self-evidence through a process of trial and error.
The scanning raises new questions, opens up unexplored fields, reveals hidden opportunities, or brings together so-called incompatibilities. Through this working method all projects are rooted in their context, but as context has a visible and a hidden part, they often surpass their physical context and they sometimes completely transform it.
This explorative approach leads to a working method, not a style. Instead, style is restrictive to exploration. Our approach saves us from dogmatic thinking, from an all too narrow agenda, from the architectural one-liner.
Team
Doug Allard, David Ampe, Vincent Blactot, Tom Bonnevalle, Maud Bouhin, Lionel Bousquet, Jérémie Brault, Karel Bruyland, Rémy Carat, Elena Caruso, Antoine Chaudemanche, Pieter Coelis, Beatrice Colaiacomo, Marie Debraine, Xaveer De Geyter, Joris De Greef, Hanne Defloor, Thaïs de Roquemaurel, Chloé de Salins, Jacqueline De Souza Luduvice, Pieter De Walsche, Nenad Duric, Eleonor Ferragu, Sandra Fol, Eric Gilham, Arie Gruijters, Annelotte Herrebosch, Ingrid Huyghe, Yannis Igodt, Ménélik Jobert, Paul-Emmanuel Lambert, Solène Le Gallo, Jonathan Robert Maj, Leo Mazurek, Philip Niekamp, Emilia Ockerman, Federico Pedrini, Anne-Sophie Rouillère, Yuichiro Suzuki, Hannelore Thomas, Foucault Tiberghien, Greta Torsello, Willem Van Besien, Wouter van Daele, Catherine Van Driessche, Matthias Van Rossen, Marie-Pierre Vandeputte, Dana Vargovčíková, Simon Vellut, Yannick Vergnaud, Samia Wahbi, Ulysse Zehnlé, Rui Zenha
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