Bottelarij, Leuven, Belgium

On an old industrial site near the Leuven Vaartkom and the Small Beguinage, we find the Bottelarij residential site. The design for this residential site was strongly influenced by its historical neighbour, the beguinage. (A side note: a beguinage is a typical Flemish way of living where single women from the 13th century onwards lived in community yet retained their own individuality. It was a very early form of independent living for women that was a lot less coercive than, say, a convent). Thus, the design borrowed its colour and form language from the beguinage. Variations on the cobblestone alleyways, garden walls, limewashed facades and the green-coloured joinery are extended in the new urban fabric. As an honest building and structure of its time, the new building also seeks to contrast with the beguinage. Lintels accentuate the window openings and provide a certain friction between the linearity of the framework and the roughness of the bare façades.

In concrete terms, the site comprises single-family houses with a garden, flats and student studios. The latter are always the vertical 'extension' of a house. In fact, two floors have been placed on top of the family homes with units that can be reached separately via passerelles and - typical of this project - concrete external staircases. The family houses are all ground-level, which is rather exceptional in urban areas. The site was not given a linear street pattern, but small streets, alleys and squares. In this way, a fully-fledged neighbourhood was created in De Bottelarij.