Blocking Tactics - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, June, 2001 by Catherine Slessor

Reinterpreting the traditional European courtyard block, this decent, dignified housing forms part of a wider masterplan for a former industrial site in Maastricht. It also suggests a model for new urban neighbourhoods.

As David Mackay of MBM has observed, current discourses on the architectural form of the city tend to be polarized between the notion of individual object buildings scattered around the city edge (in response to perceived demands of the market economy), and the painstaking consolidation of traditional street structures or districts (in response to perceptions of social identity). The two approaches might seem entirely discrepant -- one a vehicle for commercial and architectural egotism. the other overwhelmed by context -- but a major urban development in Maastricht shows how the best aspects of both can be sensitively reconciled and suggests a model for new neighbourhoods that reinterprets the European cultural tradition of the courtyard block.

Lying on the edge of the River Maas, the triangular site was formerly occupied by a vast ceramic making factory. Following a well-rehearsed developmental model of reclaiming and recolonizing pockets of redundant industrial land, the site has been cleaned up and brought into public use to a masterplan by Jo Coenen. Coenen's plan is based on a familiar urban grid, its blocks emulating the scale of Maastricht's traditional street structure strung along a spinal boulevard running on a north-south axis parallel to the river's edge. Within this framework, a posse of different architects were invited to design individual housing blocks, offices and public buildings. As the site marks a transition between the historic city centre and its industrial periphery, each end of the axial boulevard is anchored by a public building: Jo Coenen's library adjoins the historic core, while Aldo Rossi's Bonnefanten Museum reaches out to embrace the edge condition. In between lies a mixture of residential and office buildings.

Each urban block has been designed by a different architect, drawn from an impressively international group that includes Wiel Arets, Mario Botta, Herman Hertzberger and Alvaro Siza. The outcome is a predictable but none the less lively formal diversity, within the confines of Coenen's grid. Through this series of object buildings, the grain of the city is scaled-up to meet commercial needs and expectations, but these individual elements also engage and respond to each other both as neighbours and as part of a larger whole.

MBM's contribution is one of the larger blocks that breaks open the grid to connect with an adjoining garden suburb. A gently staggered terrace six storeys high (the maximum comfortable walk-up) wraps around the edge of the block, enclosing a central courtyard. Flats are planned in tenement fashion off stairwells. At the east end of the courtyard, the vista is terminated by a smaller cylindrical block of flats. Chocolate coloured brick and taut detailing recall the decency and dignity of the Amsterdam School's pioneering mass housing projects. Compared with the more hermetic and disciplined street facades, which impart a degree of privacy to bedrooms, elevations facing the courtyard are more permeable, with full-height glazed walls leading on to terraces. The theme of this basic composition is varied in two ways: first by stepping down the height of the building from the main avenue to the garden suburb, then by flipping over half a block on the south side, so that the more permeable elevations overlook a fu ture park.

Aside from such formal considerations, a degree of social mixing is achieved by combining flats for both rent and sale. Those with the best views were put on the market, but at least the two socio-economic groups share the same modest architecture.

Architect

MBM Arquitectes, Barcelona

Associates architects

Buro Boosten Rats, Carles Olmo

Photographs

Duccio Malagamba