Persoonshaven

26 duplex houses, Rotterdam Feijenoord
Public sector
Commission: Woonstad, Rotterdam
2017 – 2020

‘A sobre block with 26 stacked maisonettes in Feijenoord illustrates that, also in the 21^st century, social housing does not need to be poor or thrifty. With its facades of different sorts of bricks and gargoyles and house numbers as ornaments, the blocks evokes memories of the glory time of the Dutch housing movement.’ Dutch architecture critic Bernard Hulsman in NRC Handelsblad, 30 Dec 2020

The typological idea of the design is the House with Two Doors, which is an interpretation of the characteristic brick multi-family house in the Netherlands. Each house has two front doors at ground level, one being the entrance to a ground floor maisonette with three bedrooms, the other leading to an upper maisonette with two bedrooms via an internal staircase. The street corner dwelling has an additional room at ground floor in an extension of the main block, defining the street as a clear urban space.

The project is clad with brickwork in three different colours. Purple-red clinkers, set in tile bond, form a plinth and ressault-like motifs. The façades above  have alternating planes in bright-orange and beige bricks. All these are applied in a random brick setting with minimal vertical joints. Curly steel railings and precast concrete copings, sills and gargoyles establish restrained ornaments.

The project featured in a critique by Bernard Hulsman and was named as the nr. 1 architectural event of 2020 in the daily newspaper NRC. The project featured on international architecture websites including Architectenweb, Divisare, ArchDaily and Archello. HvdH presentented Persoonshaven at the International Conference on Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism: Timeless Architecture (link to video). Download a brochure with drawings.

Photography: Sebastian van Damme

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