Knokke-Heist, Belgium Heulebrug - No boundaries: America's housing designers discovers a global market for their skills

Residential Architect, August, 2003 by Meghan Drueding

Most U.S. developers think of Modernist housing as a risky gamble. Miami-based architects and town planners Duany Plater-Zyberk ran into the opposite situation in drawing up a master plan for the Heulebrug neighborhood, part of the city of Knokke-Heist in northern Belgium. "We found an ideological commitment to Modernism, at any cost," says DPZ's Jeff Speck, AIA, the project manager.

Contrary to prevailing opinion, however, the Lord Mayor of Knokke-Heist preferred classical architecture for the project. After an intense design charrette that included DPZ, architect and urban planner Leon Krier, and local officials, that's what he got. "Half the charrette was spent convincing administrators that classical architecture was a viable option," Speck says.

DPZ's task was to take a mostly undeveloped, 65-acre site on the southern edge of Knokke-Heist and turn it into an extension of the city. The firm's client, the Belgian state housing agency known as WVI, intends for the new neighborhood to provide much-needed middle- and working-class housing options. DPZ's New Urbanist plans usually contain a mix of residential, retail, and commercial uses, and Heulebrug is no exception. The site plan radiates out from a central, paved square surrounded by apartment buildings. The ground floors of the buildings are reserved for future retail establishments like restaurants and shops, and the firm has stipulated the presence of a cafe from the beginning of construction to provide a community gathering space while the project takes shape.

Most of the architects creating the development's individual buildings practice in Europe--the Luxembourg-born, Claviers, France-based Krier, for example, is working on a mixed-use building for the central square. But Miami architects Marieanne Khoury and Erik Vogt have designed, in conjunction with DPZ, a 50-unit apartment building on Heulebrug's northeastern border The building consists of two sections linked by a second-story bridge that allows cars and pedestrians to pass under it and into the neighborhood. Established Belgian cities and towns such as Bruges and Damme provided DPZ with models for a set of community design codes outlining building placement, roof pitches, window dimensions, and architectural details, which the bridge building follows. "It's a paean to the best of the Low Countries' architecture," says Speck. m.d.

project: Heulebrug, Knokke-Heist, Belgium

client: WVI, Bruges, Belgium

architects of featured apartment building: Khoury & Vogt Architects, Miami, with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Miami

land planners: Duany Plater-Zyberk; Leon Krier, Claviers, France

project size (overall): to be determined

project size (building): 450 to 1,200 square feet per unit

master plan site size: 65 acres

building site size: 0.8 acre

housing units overall: to be determined

housing units in building: 50

scheduled date of completion: to be determined