Slow urbanism and private housebuilding in Holland

A video of the Dutch ministrie of internal affairs promoting self building of your own house. Main reason for them is the cancellation off many projects in Holland because of the absence of project developers and investers. Projects only get built when at least 70% is sold. Because of the crisis this is very hard, though private persons and families can get a loan from the banks to build there own house. But there are almost no possibilities for this in the most urban part of Holland the Randstad (Amsterdam-Utrecht-The Hague-Rotterdam)

Slow urbanism promotes this creating of city structures based on the smallest unit. The city will later transform itself into a more urban setting by natural processes. There is no need to always built 'instant city' ensembles by project developers. City life needs time to grow.

Check the movie, it is in Dutch.

Results competition Lammermarktgebied Leiden

Sadly my entry was no winner, anyway I liked doing it. It's fun to be under pressure and design in a short time making the design a bit raw and pure but that's ok. A competition always generates a lot of ideas and energy when you make it. To finish it off I made a short explaining film of my design Bastion 2.0 hope you like it!

The winners of the competition were Edwin Santhagens (of buro Santenco) and Alex Letteboer (of atelier PRO) both from The Hague. Their design 'Outstanding Point' (Puntgaaf) won by, also like Bastion 2.0 , restoring the old bastion and rerouting traffic around it creating an pedestrian square with the museummill de Valk as landmark.

Competion Lammermarkt in the city Leiden

The former city architect of The Hague, Maarten Schmitt, is nowadays city architect for the municipality of Leiden. Together with the local architectural center RAP he set out an idea competition for the Lammermarkt area.

map of Blau made in 1649

The area used to be a bastion of the defense works of Leiden. In the end of the 19th century it was reconstructed into an english parkstyle. Nowadays it's a popular parkingplace for innercity shoppers. It has more or less a parasythical character as it doesn't bring any quality itself and lifes of this popularity of the innercity. Demand for parking is much bigger than currently is provided.

present situation Lammermarkt with the popular museum mill The Falcon

The goal of the competition is to design a parking garage for about 400-800 parking places and to make the area part of the surroundings. It should provide new quality to the area and even get cultural institutions or meaning.