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STUDIO INVESTIGATIONS
ANTWERP NEW SOUTH REDESIGNING STRATEGIC VACANT L A N D S C A P E S
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ON THE RIVER BANK
building blocks, meadows, forest and embankment
17 ARCHIPELAGO dwelling in a park
23 RESIDENTIAL & PRODUCTIVE NEW SOUTH
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INTRODUCTION
The project area in the south of the city of Antwerp covers 29 hectares and was formerly occupied by the goods railway, that was abandoned when the construction of the highway ring road isolated it. This exceptional strategic site is located at the intersection or juxtaposition of new urban projects that will transform the future of the city in coming decades: on the one hand the project to remodel the quays of the river Scheldt (thereby improving the relation between city and river); on the other hand the Groene Singel (a large green space adjacent to the ring road and accessible from the periphery and from the inner city, connecting six existing parks). Other recent interventions such as the construction of the new court building, along with future projects (football stadium, Blue-Gate business park, etc.), are transforming the areas around the project site. The urban design studio is developing a new urban district for the city of Antwerp between these boundaries: the quays of the river Scheldt in the northwest, the ring road R1 in the Green Single in the southeast, the inner city in the eastern site and the future development of the Blue-Gate business park in the southwest. In other words, Antwerpen Nieuw-Zuid is the last urban extension of Antwerp along the Scheldt. The studio is developed as an inter-scalar
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exercise, from the urban design, with special attention to the design of public space and to the definition of significant housing typologies. The course objectives are based on learning ‘urban design’, taking into account factors that are considered to be vital in all the phases of the process, from analysis of the place and its development conditions, to the design of proposals. It can be summarized as follows: - The interrelation and logic of different scales (urban design - architectural design) - The design of flexible, adaptable urban structures or systems; - Sustainable development strategies and natural resource management. - Urban and architectural design as a tool for social integration (inclusive landscapes) - Coherence and dialogue with the pre-existing structures (density, rhythm, fabric, scale, porosity, material...) and urban fabric qualities - Phase-by-phase development of the project and land management. This ANS fall 2015 studio was the third studio organized on the Antwerp New South Area in the framework of the exchange program between KU Leuven (Belgium) and HCMUARC (Vietnam). David de Kool, December 2015
33 METAMORPHOSIS from the 19th century via permeabilities to the urban balcony
43 GET YOUR FEET WET how the parkway valley meets tidal rhythms
49 NEW SOUTH FOREST rule based urbanism on urban parcellation in a woodland landscape
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ON THE RIVER BANK Nguyen Son Tung
building blocks, meadows,
Nguyen Ngoc Minh Chau
forest and the embankment
HCMUARC
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KULeuven
Antwerp New South is a site of many radical transformations. Throughout history it has had several different appearances: a dynamic that is in contrast with the more static form of the inner city. It has been a fortification in various stages, a canal and a railway yard. Interestingly, no matter what function the site has served, it was strongly structured towards the Scheldt. The Fort was strategically located next to the river, the canals were fed by the river water and the railways ended up perpendicular to the river bank. In this proposal for New South, this pattern is maintained both as an extension of the existing city as well as a new chapter of the Scheldt’s embankment. The Scheldt’s embankment has a keleidoscope 8
of landscape tissues: sometimes it is an urban quay, sometimes a (argicultural) polder, sometimes industrial. Strangely enough, the more ‘natural’ state that has the most resiliant floud protection of a tidal wetland only occors a very few times in this estuary: the new belgian nature reserve at Kruibeke and the Seeftinge land in the Netherlands. These wetlands are both in a sedimentation friendly, concave bend of the river, they begin and end a the point where the embankment is fully convex agian. The site of New South is at such a transition area as well: here the design makes a deeper bays give room to the tidal rythem of the river, while making the deep embankment high enough to protect the hinterland for extreme flouds. 9
1. Perimeter building blocks that elaborate on 19th century city, with a green boulevard.
2. Block structure opens up to meadows and forest from parkway landscape.
3. A tidal embankment with two deep bays makes large scale landscape and resiliant floud protection.
The design improves and integrates Antwerp’s existing landscapes and urban typologies. As base organisational principle, a grid is defined that organises somewhat traditional and rational perimeter blocks, typically found in Antwerp. This grid is integrated with landscapes of the forest and the meadows of the spaghetti on one side, and the riverbank and bays of the river on the other, resulting in coves of vegetation space in the grid system. Finally, a green boulevard 10
is positioned in the middle of the site, creating hierarchy in the street system and serving as a collective system for perpendicular wadi parks, interlocking with paved streets for access. The modified urban fabric has a diversity of housing typologies. These have many beautiful views over and in the distinctive landscapes: the boulevard, the wadi’s, the forest, the meadows and the wide river embankment. These milieus are the base for the system of housing 11
Circulation car bicycle
Program ground floors residential commercial public offices
Topography
guidelines: An apartment typology with double loaded corridors can be built at block edges that has landscape views on both sides (such as a wadi on one and the river embankment on the other); single loaded corridor if one of the sides is a normal street or enclosed courtyard and terraced housing if there is a normal street on one side and a courtyard on the other. Towers are positioned at places where the original conventional housing blocks are reduced to a minimum by the landscape infiltration.To complete the design, every resident has direct access to collective underground parking in their blocks. 12
Program-wise, different functions are positioned in clusters to avoid vacancy during the daytime. For instance, we incorporate commerce, offices and amenities together with housing in many of the building blocks. By removing the physical boundaries at key spatial thresholds, by improving upon the landscapes radically and by offering great residential quality, the site will become a new centrality with the new riverside quay park, which contributes not only to the residents but also to all the citizens of Antwerp. 13
Ground floor plan | 1:2000
Typical floor plan | 1:2000
Section | 1:1000
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ARCHIPELAGO Trinh Quoc Thang
dwelling in a park
Pham Thi Thuy Tien Nguyen Vu Hoang Thong
HCMUARC
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KULeuven
The Green Singel parkway as a collector of special qualitative clusters instead of a rupture.
The site of Antwerp’s New South is an intersectional area between the parkway of the Green Singel, the Scheldt River and the center of Antwerp. In general, the motorway is considered to be a rupture in the city, a vast borderland between the inner city (medieval and 19th century) and the former villages and 20th century parts of the city that lay outside of it. However, analysis of this Green Singel structure shows interesting setS of buildings, which look like “pebbles” in a “green river”. The majority 18
of these modernistic building types offer their users something quite unique: a view with long perspectives over a landscape, at locations that are relatively close to the center of the city, often combined with an enjoyable local park. So, it turns out that the ‘rupture’ is (also) a collector of special and often qualitative clusters. This design takes this quality as a starting point: it is an opportunity to continue the Green Singel to meet the river. It is designed as a big vibrant park, which forms a great dwelling environment
Circulation
Height
Programe 19
Slabs, u-buildings and building blocks deliniate various collective spaces with specific open space designs.
for its residents and neighbors, but also offers a fantastic recreational landscape for everyone in the city of Antwerp. The main principle in the design of the ‘Archipelago’ masterplan is to use landscape element to define clusters of housing. In order to do so, existing terrain is manipulated slightly to remake the site topography. The housing positions are on the higher levels, while long open views are kept open in between. Each building in a cluster has at least two views: 20
one to a collective space within the cluster and the other to the outer park landscape. This public park is designed to be meadow land with smaller landscape element such as water ponds and clumps of trees. In contrast, the inner landscapes of the clusters tend to have a more mineral materialization. They are designed to be flexible for various community activities by using orthogonally ordered furniture elements (such as trees, tiles, benches, grass, play equipment, etc.) to delineate specific spaces and programs.
Zoom | Ground floor plan | 1:2000
Typical floor plan | 1:2000 21
RESIDENTIAL & Tran Hoang Thanh Pham Duc Thinh
PRODUCTIVE NEW SOUTH
Vu Minh Phuoc
HCMUARC
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KULeuven
19th century building block
‘‘Blue Gate Block‘ Current situation: masterlans for Blue Gate & New South, together with existing industry, create a ‘modernistic’ devision between working and dwelling
Proposed oversized buidling block
Proposal: a new masterlans for the whole area with a mixity between residential and productive activities, not only to replace current masterplans, but also for future transformations. 24
The city of Antwerp is expanding beyond its 19th century center, and the site of New South is one of the most important puzzle pieces to bridge the gap between what has been and what is going to happen. Although is has always been a key point at the cross of the Hard Spine (urban development) and the Soft Spine (green space development), the site has been mostly programmed and designed as an end point. As it is today, the residential development of
New South completes Antwerp’s inner city, which is also discontinued because of the ring motorway. Beyond the motorway are various industries, one of them being the Blue Gate Project for contemporary productivity and logistics. As the 21st century coming towards its adolescence, light industries have become a trend. With new techniques like 3D printing and automated transportation, they provide everyday products, with smaller production and logistical 25
Typological arrangement
Location of activities
Green open spaces
Guides for the proposed oversized mixed building block.
Logistical comb structure
Comb green structure
Green open spaces
Structure of the new masterpland for Antwerp New South.
units, but in vast amount. This creates less noise and pollution inconveniences, while being easier to establish due to its minor investment cost. It also generates specialized service employment to create the specific programming and to design unique products. Less pollution, smaller grain, more employment: it seems like a golden opportunity to get away from the archa誰c devisions between working and dwelling. If we take possibilities from 26
21st century productivity into consideration, we could combine the sites of New South with the project of Blue Gate and the production zone in Kiel. This would co-operate light industrial and residential areas into one urban form, something that would create vibrant opportunities for the continuity of the city of Antwerp as a whole. The spatial concept of this design is to weave the natural landscapes into the building blocks, both stretching the urban development until Kiel 27
Public amenities
Building height
Walking, cycling & public transport
Car infrastructure & parking
and Hoboken, as linking the various patches of nature into an ecological network. The core elements are the oversized building blocks. They are very long and large in order to make space for a diversity of building typologies and spatial experiences. A minimum distance of 40 meters between rear facing buildings is kept as a principle to secure spatial quality: longitudinally, the connection between the natural green space and landscape inside and
blocks is kept throughout. A combination of different typologies, including different activities, are compacted within each block. Together, the design enables its users and inhabitants to enjoy multiple spatial experiences, ranging from open space filled with activities, to street of logistics to calm green patches in between buildings, to an active quay, to large natural pieces of greeneries.
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Ground floor plan | 1:2000
Typical floor plan
Section | 1:1000
Section | 1:3000 30
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METAMORPHOSIS Pham Hoang Pham Nu Thuc Anh Nguyen Nhat Minh
HCMUARC
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from the 19th century via permeabilities to the urban balcony
KULeuven
Spaces defined by building blocks ‘Open’ spaces Buildings surrounded by open space Facades that define open space Potential open space connection Linear connection
1. Existing: railway remains & vegetation.
2. Structure frame, based on rail rhythm.
3. Public spine,departing from rail spine.
4. Defined space near 19th century city, around existing trees.
5. Hybrid & pearmeable space inside public spine, around exitsing trees.
6. ‘Open’ space between spine and parkway + urban balcony over the Scheldt.
Open space typologies in the contemporary city
Located between the inner 19th century city and the outer 20th century urban areas, the site of Antwerp’s New South is a strategic location in the city’s development. The starting point of this design is to harmoniously link the city of building blocks with the parkway landscape of the Green Singel. By analyzing the open spaces 34
hierarchy, the logic of how these spaces are defined and how they are connected with each other, we found out that open spaces in the city are defined by courtyard blocks while in new neighborhoods outside, public spaces are often big green spaces scattering around naturally or wrapping slabs. Continuing and integrating
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these logics would provide a rich and diverse environment for both the residents, as the surrounding neighborhoods, as great spaces for everyone in the city of Antwerp. The main starting point of the design is to create two spines extended from the city running 36
throughout the site. THey are based on the railway traces and used to connect with further parts of Antwerp. First, all of the green relics on site are embraced and combined with a new wadi system to make a continuous Green Spine. New vegetation joins the landscape with existing structures along the Green Singel. 37
Water system wadi wadi square water accumulation
Commercial buildings commercial buildings residential & public buildings
Parking & car infrastructure underground parking car road
Walking, cycling & public transport pedestrian cycling tram
Embankment analysis
Quay design
The second spine plays a role of a public hub continued from a long large square along Waalsekaai and Vlaamsekaai boulevard tracing the old railway track and making a strong exclamation mark by reaching deeply into the river Scheldt with a huge wooden platform. Typological variation is the third key part of the concept. A series of open space types with
different scales and programs, walking and cycling paths are integrated along the two spines making New South a hybrid urban neighborhood. In order to make a soft transition, spaces which are more defined by courtyard blocks on the city edge become more open and blend into the nature with slabs on the further side. The theme of transition is continued in the new quay design
as well: the hard edge alongside the existing city become softer and more natural towards the south. In addition, to further improve the water system, a large proportion of the open space is kept natural and permeable. Numbers of infiltration ponds on the low land together with the water squares are designed as a part of a wadi system
can effectively mitigate the flooding issues in heavy rain. Zooming out, the two spines blur the sharp hard infrastructure boundary around Antwerp city center. It is the diversity of urban spaces with different characteristics and activities that enables interaction makes New South a unique district integrating and enriching it’s context.
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Zoom 1 | Typical floor plan | 1:2000
Zoom 2 | Typical floor plan | 1:2000
Ground floor plan
Ground floor plan
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GET YOUR FEET WET Nguyen Hoang Tung Cao Nhan Duc
how the parkway valley meets tidal rythems
Vu Hoang Kim Qui
HCMUARC
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KULeuven
Being both the starting point of the green single parkway landscape as well as part of the river quay, Antwerp New South will have to be considered a development of both urban and natural coalescence. The up and down movement of tide and the kinetic topography that accompanies the traffic infrastructure could conjoin to become a new park as well as ecolandscape. When analyzing parks and urban spaces that have meaning on the scale of the whole city, one notices that the quays and south-docks definitely have their potential, but at the moment this part of Antwerp lacks a well-designed urban space of city-importance. So, first of all, it is essential that the open space for Antwerp new south is not merely another part of the key, an extension of the south docks, or a small park, but that it is a city park in itself, a park that forms a gravity point on the quay and connects to other public 44
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Daily tide, water until 6,5 meter.
Twice a year floods, water until 8.35 meter.
Topography
Programme
Extreme flood, water until 9.25 meter.
After flood, water at lower tide (< 6,5m). Remaining lake with with waterlevel at 6 meter until high water is over.
Slabs with appartment with double high living rooms and collectave roof top terraces
Large perimeter blocks with collective couryard and appartment typologies with double high rooms.
spaces, creating a public space meaningful for everyone in Antwerp. Secondly, on a more detailed level, every apartment in this new design will have great quality, both the indoor space, as the views to the collective and public outside domains.This is achieved by a stipulation of apartments types with double height rooms, by the large public park and the spatial quality of the collective spaces if the huge building blocks. Thirdly, in learning from the topography, vegetation, buildings and infrastructure form the Green Single, this landscape is continued by creating a valley perpendicular to the Scheldt. Moreover, these topography modifications also
grasp the opportunity to create more room for the river. This adds spatial quality of a floodable landscape that has veegetation divergence and soil variation. Here adaptive and flexible wetland bring people closely to the water. Finally, these alterations can be achived by a cut and fill method of articulating new levels of topography. By only heightening terrain with soil dug out from the site itself, there is no need for soil from somewhere else. In addition, the new housing topologies accommodate the new landscape, together making the adaptation for the long term flood protection, a great park, great views and high quality of living.
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Zoom | Ground floor plan | scale 1:2000
Zoom | Typical floor plan 47
NEW SOUTH FOREST Tran Hai Tu Phan Le Khanh Nhu Ngo Nguyen Minh
HCMUARC
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rule based urbanism on urban parcellation in a woodland landscape
KULeuven
Foresting green single and New South
Antwerp is a polluted city within a region with enormous traffic flows. The ground, water and air are all polluted. In other words, Ecology of Antwerp is at risk and has no enhancement in recent years. Doing an investigation in the green system in big scale of Antwerp, we can easily see that Antwerp has some wonderful existing
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greeneries along ring road and the west side of the river. However, they are disconnected and diminished for new urban quarters in the future. In term of neighborhood scale: New South of Antwerp, the area has many existing big old trees and some of them are very valuable, besides that, the site can be seen as a transition
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Secion | 1:5000
Quay Elevation | 1:15000
between the old urban area and the big forest locates in the south of Antwerp. In summary, in order to enhance the ecology and connect greenery system of Antwerp, Forest can be used as a concept to develop New South as a city in Forest.
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Looking at the Vision and Elevation, Forest can be the end of Antwerp and the starting point of Forest Urbanism for the whole city. In order to adapt the changes in future, the Clearing and Housing Development rules we set to make sure this urban strategic project
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Infrastructure and building height
Programs and shadow study
Forest arrangment
Quay design: thinning of the forest towards the water, change in forest type due to richer soil and wetter condotions.
can be flexible and fit in different purposes of developers but still maintain the same benefits of Forest we mentioned. Firstly, the site will be divided into different parts which has the boundary of pedestrian and the curve motorway and we can only clear maximum 35% of the Forest in each block and avoid to clear the
permanent forest. After that, the buildings will be developed 50% of the clearings and left the rest for collective spaces. The buildings can have the parking if it stays shorter than 100m away from the main street. Moreover, the vegetation staying next to the building should be low and is able to be taken care by resident as collective garden.
Two buildings staying near each other should not create shadow problem to another and each building should have at least two views. Base on the rules, we try to create different scenario with bad thinkings of developers to make sure all the rules are good enough to maintain the benefits.
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Zoom 1 | Ground floor plan
Zoom 1 | section | 1:500 56
2 typical floor plans
Zoom 2 | Ground floor plan | 1:2000
Typical floor plan
Zoom 2 | section | 1:500 57
DESIGN PROCESS
HCMUARC
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KULeuven
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RESEARCH GROUP URBANISM AND ARCHITECTURE
STUDIO TEAM David de Kool Tran Trung, Vinh Bruno De Meulder PIN-UPS Erik De Deyn Cecilia Furlan Joonwoo Kim Julie Marin Wim Wambecq MID REVIEW Erik De Deyn Joris Moonen
FINAL REVIEW Maud Coppenmands (City of Antwerp) Patrick Lootens (Polo Architects, Antwerp) Joris Moonen (KU Leuven & WIT Architects) Mateo Motti (Politecnico di Milano, IT) Dirk van Peijpe (De Urbanisten, Rotterdam, NL)
January 2016 Department of Architecture, K.U.Leuven Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Leuven, Belgium ISBN: 978-94-6018-980-7
ĐẠI HỌC KIẾN TRÚC HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE
STUDIO PARTICIPANTS Cao, Nhan Duc Ngo, Nguyen Minh Nguyen, Hoang Tung Nguyen, Ngoc Minh Chau Nguyen, Nhat Minh Nguyen, Son Tung Nguyen, Vu Hoang Thong Pham, Duc Thinh Pham, Hoang Pham, Nu Thuc Anh Pham, Thi Thuy Tien Phan, Le Khan Nhu Tran, Hai Tu Tran, Hoang Thanh Trinh, Quoc Thang Vu, Hoang Kim Qui Vu, Minh Phuoc