The “Meerwijk” district in Schalkwijk, built in the 1960s, has been built on the corner of Bernadottelaan and Albert Schweizerlaan. This center is part of the urban design that was made by our office in 2001. The building with retail spaces, including the Vomar supermarket, an underground parking garage with 215 places and 74 apartments, is one of the sub-plans of the community center. The whole has a modern, transparent and friendly character and adapts well to the neighborhood.
| Architects | Ronald Knappers |
| Client(s) | Hoorne b.v. |
Commissioned by Bouwfonds REIM, VVKH has made a design for a distinguishable new shoppingbuilding. The new building is facing a main road entering Utrecht and acts as a showcase for the home and living stores in the streets behind. The plan consists of the demolition of an outdated officebuilding and construction of the new building with several shops showing a transparant facade towards the Europalaan.
The ‘Oud Woelwijk’ farm, the oldest part of which dates from before 1528, was still standing at the beginning of the 20th century in a sea of lands and bushes to the south of the village center of Voorschoten. The farm formed an ensemble with the country estate of Roucoop. The country estate no longer exists, and from 1930 the built-up area has been advanced. Yet the Essenlaan is still a protected leafy lane that leads to the old farm. For a plot directly on the other side of the farm, we have made a design for a contemporary energy-neutral home. The single-storey house with hood is designed as an outbuilding of the farm. You reach the plot via a bridge that cuts through the historic woods at a clever location. A very spacious home has been designed partly due to a number of voids. The volume is still closed on the farm side. On the south side, the house opens to the large garden.
The Wall in motion
The Wall shopping center in Leidsche Rijn, located next to the A2, which also serves as a noise barrier, changed hands in 2018. Together with the new owners, real estate investors / developers Built to Build and Urban Interest, we have investigated parts that have not been implemented or have been incompletely completed and measures that are additionally needed to optimize the letting of the building. Since then, they have been working with them on perfecting both the building and the public space to make the shopping center a success.
The first steps for the Wall 2.0 have now been taken.
Since December 2018, a new AMAC location has been opened in the end building. We have made a number of allotment proposals and prepared various units in the end building based on the layout agreed with AMAC. The interior design was provided by Apple itself. In addition to a retail space, this location includes an auditorium, training room, service desk and repair center and warehouse / storage space in The Wall.
A number of improvements / changes that were implemented in 2019 and 2020 are an extra rise point to make the parking roof accessible from the adjacent office building, and an extra retail space on the deck. The entrance on the south side of the building has been adapted, with a tapis roulant and extra escalators. And on the north side of the building, an extra entrance, rising point and a roof building will be realized.
In addition, the possibilities for sustainability are being investigated by installing solar panels on the parking deck, making the parking deck greener and redesigning the ground level.
At the beginning of the Kruisweg, the housing project ‘Gemaalhuis’ marks the entrance to Hoofddorp. In collaboration with Timpaan, RROG Urban Planning and Landscape and IBB, moes have been realized in a place where offices used to dominate in the past.
The design for 83 dwellings near the center of Hoofddorp provides a transition between the village ribbon development along the Kruisweg and the large, urban scale that Hoofddorp aspires to. At the design site, the original polder structure was situated perpendicular to the direction of the rest of the Haarlemmermeer. In the design, a passage has been made here in the building block: a quiet residential court without cars and shared use of public space. The buildings are all-sided, refers to the past and seems to have been there for some time without being historicizing. The architecture is robust and stony. Rich brick details refer to the steam pumping stations that stood at the beginning of the creation of Hoofddorp. The complex is a neighbourhood in itself and has variety of housing typologies; single-family houses, veranda houses, terrace houses and apartments. The apartments are designed as freely divisible lofts.
The homes were completed in June 2020.
