The client’s brief called for a community centre (capacity: 300 people) and the development of a private housing typology (35 houses). Rather than focusing on the design of 35 private typologies – which seemed redundant given the bland context – we proposed a powerful infrastructural approach, deliberately aiming at a contextual angle.
The existing sports centre and adjacent soccer field triggered the project. The injected infrastructure – a scaled athletics track – complements the existing sport context and imbues the newly planned allotment with a daring instant identity. The track provides a clear-cut unity, which virtually any kind of architecture, programme or shape can plug into. Each resident can reach for his or her private sky. The track’s division into lanes allows for an enhanced use. The outer lane of red tarmac is intended for car traffic, while the rubber-floored inner lanes (the actual running track) can accommodate everything known as ‘soft’. The short track connects the street to the soccer field. In this way a condensed avenue emerges, along which the existing sports centre is sided by the new open-air community centre, with its stands overlooking the housing infrastructure.