In 2009–2010, Russian architect Timur Shabaev and Italian Marco Galasso won the pan-European Europan competition, more precisely, its 10th edition. Europan is designed for aspiring architects - under 40 years old - and differs from most others in that the winning projects are designed to be implemented on a specific site (these sites, each with its own team from the developer and the city authorities, are selected by Europan organizers on a special preliminary round), which ideally happens. Accordingly, the competition consists of many sub-competitions held for each specific site. The Shabaev and Galasso project was recognized as the best for the site in Emmen, a city in the north of the Netherlands.
Work on the project (it was being revised according to the changed plans of the customer, the housing corporation Lefier) and implementation took a lot of time: Timur Shabaev managed to get a master's degree at the Berlage Institute, worked at OMA / AMO, including on the new building of the Moscow Garage Museum, a number of projects for the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, over the curriculum of the Strelka Institute, and this year - to open with colleagues in Rotterdam the DROM architectural bureau, which is also involved in projects in Russia - Moscow, Novosibirsk, Surgut.
At the beginning of July 2016, the social housing complex in Emmen finally opened, and now tenants are already moving in there. Timur is still the only Russian who won Europan - however, it is hoped that his example of success will encourage Russian architects to take an active part in this interesting and useful competition.
We asked Timur Shabaev tell about the project for Emmen and its implementation.
“The key idea that gave the name to our proposal - Sutures - and allowed us to win the competition, were 'seams': this is how we called the open collective spaces that we proposed to form in the center of the block thanks to the exchange of land between the municipality and the developer - housing corporation Lefier. Our metaphor is the Japanese art of kintsugi: broken ceramic vessels are glued together with gold glue, and as a result, the restored dishes receive much more value than what they originally had.
The fact is that the cadastral map on the site was the very same "fragments" - the sites had an irregular acute-angled shape, and it would be impossible to build anything intelligible on them without buying additional land. Our proposal made it possible to quickly and without additional financial costs from the housing corporation form rectangular pieces of land, as well as allow the city to invest in the improvement of a public courtyard in the center of the quarter.
Such a public courtyard is not at all typical for the Netherlands. An ordinary quarter in this country is divided from the inside into small private gardens, and social life takes place on the street. Our proposed solution is more like
Beguinage is a medieval complex of the semi-monastic community of Beguines, where cell buildings, a chapel, etc. were grouped around the courtyard. The only difference is that we have several entrances to this courtyard from the street, and they are completely open.
The Test Project did not include an indication of the type and volume of housing, and after receiving the customer's terms of reference, already during the development of the first variants of houses, we began to test different typologies and appearance, keeping the key idea of "seams" unchanged.
After economic calculations, the customer decided to use the typical Dutch typology of a blocked single-family house. We were given strict parameters for the set and area of premises, as well as the construction budget, which determined the final volumetric solution of houses with a pitched roof
Our subsequent work was aimed at creating an “additional” quality of life in our social complex within the framework of the traditional typology and a small budget. We used 2 standard sizes of houses: 5.4 m wide and 6 m wide, which made it possible to more efficiently arrange them on the site. To reduce the cost, the dimensions of the windows were unified, and in order to compensate for the monotony of the long building of the house and to give the "character" to the street, we used facade spurs that visually divide the buildings into segments of different widths
The first floor is finished with black ceramic bricks, the top and roof are made in a single material - this is galvanized sheet metal. In the courtyard, the removal of the roof forms a kind of loggia - a strip of the local garden protected from rain and sun. Its walls are decorated with Siberian larch. Towards the street, the facade has three floors, which gives a more “urban” scale. From the yard, the scale is reduced.
The adjoining garden acts as a buffer, creating a level of privacy transition from the living room, "looking" at it through the large window, to the public space of the courtyard. The landscape of the courtyard is created with the active participation of the residents themselves. The project to be implemented was chosen through a vote, and subsequently the maintenance of the garden will become a joint concern of the new neighbors. The landscaping will be completed by the end of the year.
Residents were consulted and their community was built by a developer - a housing corporation. The selection of tenants was based on a motivation letter: it was important that future residents were ready to invest their time and money in maintaining the yard. It was also important that they were from different age and social groups. Residents were given a choice between several layouts and two types of living room windows facing the courtyard. They then chose between three landscaping options for the courtyard.
The tenants organized a working group led by one active pensioner, which is engaged in communication with the housing corporation and resolving operational issues. In particular, they traveled to Amsterdam and Rotterdam to learn from the experience of collectively maintaining the neighborhood gardens. We took part in one of the informal meetings with residents - we answered their questions about architectural solutions."
