CHASSÉ TERRAIN[BREDA - NETHERLANDS]

Project No.1

The Chasse Terrain project is located on an empty spot in city-centre along the river but also part of a green space. Being used to be a former military site with existing buildings but in 1996, there was a project that developed the entire area into new functions area. The project holds a large program of hous-ing along with huge scale of parking lot. Furthermore, there is a theatre constructed within the site in front of the big square area which is designed as parking space. Most of the buildings are set in different direction or establishing in isolated objects not only to maximize the amount of perspective view ports in different places within the whole park but also respect the existing build-ing and green elements inside. Right inside the city heart, the project provide such a huge sup-plement for dwelling capacity for the city Breda with around 800 dwelling units in different kinds of typology such as row houses and apartments.

location Breda, Netherlands date: 1996 - are a: 13 ha program: Apartments, offices and public orders client: Wilma Bouw & Proper Stock Developers

World Map

Regional Location

Google Earth Google Earth

Neighborhood Scale-Urban Plan

Building types:1) Chassé parking 10) Shops, supermarket2) Park apartments 11) Carre apartments3) Palace, apartment block 12) Holland casino4) Patio Villas 13) Three blocks5) Winter-Garden apartments 14) Canal houses6) Small theatre for concerts 15) 3rd City offices7) Museum houses and offices 16) Chasse theatre8) Houses at the nonnenveld 17) Main square9)Extension of hotel Keijser

SITEWithin the site, the green and open space are mostly the short-cuts for pedestrians and cycling but not the car which can only direct to the underground parking lot. The arrangement of all the buildings within the site creates different hierarchy of open space leads to the variety of spatial elements. The penetration throughout the area from different direction is situated along some small roads or paths inside but just avail-able for walking and cycling. Some of the access points only lead to the open-cast parking lot.The whole terrain is not only 3/4 covered by green space but also adjacent to the neutral park in the east side. These two big green spaces create the linear connection between the area and the east part of the city.It is easy to see that without mentioning about the new park-ing space created in the terrain, the city has to spend a lot of potential surface territory only for parking. Furthermore, some streets in the South West of the city have to be narrowed also for car capacity. So along with the heavy pressure of 800 resi-dential units, offices and public constructions from the devel-oping of Chasse Terrain will absolutely cause a huge lacking of car parking space. Therefore, the idea of constructing almost all of the parking lot of the site under the five 13-floor towers and the big central open square is an extreme essential design from the group of architect. With the facilities over 670 park-ing places on a total of 18500 square meters, this underground parking lot is sufficient for not only the Chasse area itself but also for the adjacent areas.The idea for this big parking space is to direct the sunlight into through 13 patios in order to erase all the dark corner within.

Noli Map1:2500

Picture of Housing Project

SITE

Open Space Structure

Inversed Figure Ground

Circulation Scheme Site access Green Space

Public-Private Spaces Porosity

Underground parking lot

Parking lot

Block location

Ground floor plan

1st Floor plan

Vertical Access

Parking AccessLift Staircase

3D Model of Building Typology

BUILDINGBUILDING

Description: The building was constructed in 1996 by Xaveer de Geyter and finished in 2001. The towers are standing on a semi-underground parking ring. There are total 137 apart-ments of all 5 towers. These 5 buildings are oriented along the parking ring to maximize the light reflection through glass sur-face to the inner garden. Every apartment has it own winter garden which can be used as outer space or extended for the interior space. The back of the buildings are constructed with concrete which keeps the privacy of each apartment.Access: Through the inner garden and the parking ring, there are accesses to all the 5 towers. There is a staircase and an elevator for each building.

Access from parking space

Access from the garden

Interior Spaces: The space within each apartment is all sun-light directed through translucent material. The interesting X construction decorates for the inner space a new experience of interior design. Night areas such as bedrooms or bathrooms are covered by the compound of glass and concrete.

Exterior Space: Each apartment is provided with a veranda which can be interior or exterior space.

Morphology: The construction is basicallydesigned tall, rectangular boxes anddifferently placed. However all the building is perfectly located along the parking ring tomaximal reflect sunlight into the gardenbeneath.

Building Volums: There are 4 towers have thesame dimension of 19mx19m. And the rest isabout 19mx25m. All of them are 41m high equivalent to 14 storey and has total of 33.420 square meters floor area.

DWELLING

Tower 14 flats appartment

Day zone

A

E

F

G

B

C

D

Vertical circulation

Entrance Area

Night zone

Winter garden

Tower 31 flat appartment

Tower 2, 4 and 52 flat appartment

These five towers are designed in order to be suitable to the different needs of housing. There are 3 kinds of apart-ment applied into the building. The similarities of all the flats are 14 floors high, sharing the same entrance area and vertical circulation (lift and staircase), having winter garden and mostly have full sunlight access. The first kind is 4 flats apartment (tower 1) which is 19x25 square meters. The second one is one flat only for the whole floor which is possibility suitable for large family.The rest has the same measurement with the second type. However, it is divided into 2 equal parts for 2 flatsFlat information: A: 98 m2 - winter garden 15%B: 121 m2 - winter garden 12%C: 124 m2 - winter garden 10%D: 103 m2 - winter garden 10%E: 320 m2 - winter garden 10%F: 160 m2 - winter garden 12%G: 160 m2 - winter garden 17%

The different types of apartment are appropriate to differ-ent family conditions. All the flats are designed with winter garden to bring more natural elements inside. More than that, the flexibility of extension although creates the vari-ety of dwelling using.

CONCEPT

REFERENCES:

In general view, the entire project is a great change from the very old space (military area) into a very new space with totally different functions includes residential area, offices, shopping center and public amenities. Although it is a brand new proj-ect, the idea is respecting and developing base on the exist-ing buildings and green space. Some of military buildings are kept and changed the function within in order to maintain the characteristic of history and to adapt to the new function fol-lowing the project. The most impressive of this project is to deal and solve the problem of car capacity rising along with the site development. All of the cars are led to the underground park-ing lot which takes a seriously important place of the project to provide an entirely car free open space. In conclusion, the project represents a new full function, car free neighborhood within Breda.

Xaveer de Geyter, “Xaveer de Geyter Architects, 12 projects” 2001, p. 128-137.Tijdschrift A+T, Chasse Terraain, Breda, Masterplan/parking, A+T 20,2002, p14-45.Bas Meijerman, Architectural research, June 2008, p.20-23.Gunter Pfeifer & Per Brauneck, “Free standing house”, 2010, p. 92-93.