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One Architecture & Urbanism

One Architecture & Urbanism

Amsterdam, NL and New York

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Amstellaan

In 2008, housing corporation Rentree’s ambitious plans for the transformation of the Deventer Rivierenwijk came to a slow stop. 300 houses were already demolished in the process, leaving a neighborhood torn to pieces.

ONE’s subsequent Urban Framework describes new spatial starting points, conditions and directives. It indicates how the actors’ various spatial interventions, e.g. the reconstruction of the Amstellaan, 500 new houses, local facilities, neighborhood connections, and landscape structure, will combine into a coherent result. All obstacles obstructing the restart have been solved with the designs of the plan’s components.

An important feature in the design and how the neighborhood will function in the future was integrating and widening the Amstellaan, a main traffic artery.  In the past, developers and engineers had imagined many options, all equally unfeasible and undesirable, all based on a pure technical infrastructural logic. One Architecture changed roles: by making the engineers work with the designers, One Architecture created a new design. Suddenly, the design was within budget and received the full support of the area’s residents. Now, this design has been developed, tendered and is under construction, with an estimated delivery late 2014.

Further optimizations of the plan’s components are the result of this joint planning process. Project Amstellaan will result in a “tree bank”, making full-grown trees available cheaply for new construction. The green buffer space enables flexibility and room for optimization of Rentree’s housing program.

  • Project period: 2011 – 2014 (constructed; urban redevelopment ongoing)
  • Client: Municipality of Deventer, the Netherlands
  • Collaborators: Royal HaskoningDHV
 
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Status: Built