Spinning along dead-end-streets, crunching over speed bumps, asking everyone and anyone the way, coming across the most marvellous things and finally - with a sigh of relief, hot and bothered and of course too late for words - reaching your destination: that is the experience of visitors to the 'stray-urbs' or 'easytowns'. Did it have to be that difficult?
Other questions dogging me at the onset of the study were: Why did these easytowns die such an early death? What, exactly, is going on at century's end? Does the heightened competition on the housing market necessitate critically rehabilitating the 'new frumpish' residential districts of the seventies? It struck me as desirable to develop a strategy to improve the easytowns.
For a case study, I chose the district of Haagse Beemden in Breda. Designed by L.J.M. Tummers, Haagse Beemden was the model for many seventies districts. A time-space analysis brought to the fore problems mainly concerned with a local 'clogging' of scale and produced this uniform and thoroughly isolated labyrinth. Not the most inviting of districts then, despite all the treasures waiting to be found there.
I sought interventions that would respect the district's youthful history and at the same time stimulate new developments. Shifts in scale proved to offer the answer. These encourage the isolated district to graft on to the network of the region, while structuring unbridled home extensions on the micro planning level. Here the shifts in scale relate specifically to Haagse Beemden but broadly speaking hold for easytowns everywhere.
Place of education: Rotterdam
Specialization: stedebouw/urban design
Tutors: Endry van Velzen, Arnold Reyndorp, Harm Tilman & Paul Bosse
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