Design for an innovative concept of dwelling that compellingly unites public and private domains.

This project places twenty-four dwellings along the grand Hofplein railway line in Rotterdam and stitches them to the public domain in an altogether new way. My intention is to unite the private and public domains so as to incite a stimulating interaction between the two. And this without there being hard and fast boundaries and without the synergy compromising the intimacy of dwellings or the collectivity of the public realm. The ground-breaking dwelling concept locks into this ambition, encompassing in its space plan a gradual transition from openness to intimacy. Moving through the rooms in one of the dwellings, you can sense the different gradations of openness and intimacy. Rather than being experienced as each other's antithesis, public and private link arms in this project.
The scheme inveighs against a design practice geared to avoiding conflict. Current doctrine leads in an inner-city context to spatial configurations that fail to interrelate, with rigid boundaries between public and private and a cavalcade of protective constructs to prevent the two disturbing one another.
Aided by case and literature studies, I assembled the design resources and insights that would make it possible to stitch private and public domains together.
First, I analysed the two domains. In the public domain, a culture of freedom, equality, openness and accessibility prevails. The Latin word 'privare', which is where our word 'private' comes from, literally means to appropriate for one's own use. In the private domain, appropriated from the public domain, dwelling comes across as an intimate act whereby residents relate to their own reality. Intimacy comes from the Latin word 'intimus' meaning inside, inner. When the extremes of public and private domains are juxtaposed in an urban context, an anonymity ensues in the public domain and intimacy needs creating through isolation. In this project, dwelling can be regarded as finding oneself inside, in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Architectural means thoughtfully deployed can engineer the link with the public domain. All this in the spirit of Herman Hertzberger as he couches it in his book 'Lessons for Students In Architecture' (010 Publishers, 1991, p. 86): 'A step-by step sequence of indications by architectonic means ensures a gradual entrance and exit. The entire complex of experiences elicited by the architectonic means contributes to this process: gradations of height, width, degree of illumination (natural and artificial), materials, different floor-levels.'

Place of education: TU Delft | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Birgit Jürgenhake, Paul Kuitenbrouwer, Ype Cuperus