Don Bosco

Eindhoven
X

This residential project with 53 rentable social housing units comprises two volumes plus a row of four studio houses and two private houses. It fills an urban space previously defined by the rear aspects of buildings. The studio houses are built against the rear of the existing buildings and are designed as open spaces, giving artists the freedom to design the inner spaces themselves. They have a workspace on the ground floor and living areas on the two storeys above. A two-sided orientation is deliberately chosen for the larger of the two blocks so that the student apartments lying opposite are not confronted with the sight of a rear elevation. An occupied impression is created by orienting the apartments toward the inner square and placing the glass stairwells at the ends of the building so that activity within the building is visible to those outside. At night, the stairwells act as lanterns for these socially vulnerable areas.