The Mandemaker site is located within the historically star-shaped development of the village center and lies between 2 radial roads. We are designing a new elongated volume with a central underpass that reconnects the two roads while introducing different, clearly defined and contiguous public outdoor spaces. On the southwest side, we envision a publicly accessible, biodiverse and climate-robust neighborhood garden that will provide oxygen, cooling and visual comfort to the new development and the existing neighborhood. To achieve a diversified housing scheme, a second, larger green volume consisting of a succession of private gardens is located on the northeast side. These gardens are accessed at the back by a service path onto Kleine Mandemakersstraat, designed as a play street. Buckling the main volume in the middle creates light and air in this connecting street and the possibility of adding solitary trees and green elements.

The east-west oriented beam-shaped volume, which houses all 40 residential units (8 types 1/2, 20 types 2/3, 4 adapted types 2/3 and 8 types 3/4 with garden), is incorporated into the existing fabric by means of two corner volumes. These volumes, which complete the party walls of the adjacent building blocks, leave room for smaller, open plazas that form the main addresses. We design vibrant buildings without inactive facades where each unit has two orientations. In this way, each residential unit overlooks both the greenery and the street. The units in the end volumes are designed as modified corner apartments on one level. In contrast, the units in the beam volume assume a scale between apartment and house: the maisonette or duplex house. They are accessed from ground level or from only one exterior access deck on the second floor, allowing the facades to remain free. Each of these units has either direct access to the collective garden via a terrace or a private rooftop terrace. By working with staggered floors in this housing row, a great spaciousness can be realized in a very economical way. The homeliness that characterizes this spatial configuration is part of the key to qualitatively increasing density in a municipal context.

From our design research into high-density low-rise buildings, we manage, within the gabarit of 3 floors and a roof, to double the gross floor area (GFA) (from 2.812 m2 existing condition to 5.678 m2 new condition) and to reduce the footprint from 1.433 m2 to 1.360 m2 .