Danning Erve South

Master plan and public space design for a village extension

The issue

Typically small-town extensions are small generic city extensions. They are blind to the town’s characteristics, killing its identity. This extension needs to reinforce and repair the town’s spatial quality.

Our statement

To strengthen the town’s character, the parcelling of the landscape has to be the base for the developments structure. Spatial principles derived from the organically grown village have to be the base for the design.

Our solution

The design is based on the long-stretched parcelling of the landscape. Two parallel streets open up the building plots. Trees and protruding alignments give reason to little deviations in the street profile, creating an organically grown appearance and slowing down traffic naturally. Plots for individual owner-builders and small-scale developments are strategically mixed, providing architectural structure. A green zone in the middle creates a communal area and a vista to the landscape. Rules for a changing building line instigate collaboration between the new residents, creating a neighbourhood community already before they start to build and live here.

Data
Client: City of Meppel
Location: Nijeveen, The Netherlands
Area: 6.2 ha.
Year: 2003-2009
Status: Ratified, Constructed
Budget: €1.3 million (public space)
Partners: OKRA landscape architects, DAAD architects, B+O architects, SKA architects