Sonja Portz
Housing project in Eupen / Belgium. FH Aachen (Germany)
Eupen with approx. 17500 inhabitants is a major town and municipal centre of the German-speaking community in the Walloon Region of the Kingdom of Belgium.
One of the aims of the designing project was to promote living in an urban environment and to prevent migration of the inhabitants to rural areas. There is an increasing demand by young families and elderly couples for houses with suitable sized indoor living and outdoor space. The targeted development area is located in close proximity to the city centre, the Upper Town, renowned for its numerous historic buildings and attractive public areas and streets. Surrounded by detached houses and typically urban apartment blocks, the location asks for a reconciliating structure, in which the terrain sloping steeply north-westward could present a serious problem. The floating horizontal integrated in the slope formed the fundamental concept of the design, a construction with a loosely structured appearance and ground plan clinging to the slope. Irregularities of the structural levels and the definition of public, semi-public and private areas are associated to the restricted dimensions of the town. The seemingly floating ceiling of the basement garage is the main access to the different spaces within the building and presents itself as a uniting element of community life.
Two main types of buildings are characteristic for the town. Both accommodate apartment modules allowing flexible forms of utilisation. They can be used as individual flats or by combining them open-plan spaces covering a single level can be created, in order to fulfil the different needs and to adapt to the changing structures of the households. The basically open ground plans are separated by cubes into different living areas and offer a large variety of living and other individual utilisation possibilities.
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