Evaluation
Character
Drawing upon Dutch architectural heritage, West 8's plan for Borneo Sporenburg was inspired by villages on the former Zuiderzee, where small, intimate houses descend towards the water. More that 100 architects participated, developing new housing prototypes and the resulting designs include patios, roof gardens and striking views of the waterfront.
The variety of house types, distinctive apartment blocks and the waterfront add character to the peninsulas and make the neighbourhood easy for visitors to navigate. Streets are well overlooked helping to make public spaces feel safe. The narrow low-rise housing types are conceived as introverted patio houses. All private outside spaces as well as parking places are to be found within the plot. Car ports share the street frontage with the entrances, and are made palatable by inventively designed porches, doors and gates.
On a small part of Borneo, the city has made available 60 'free parcels' on which private individuals are able to have their own homes built, under strict urban planning and architectural preconditions. These 'architects-houses' are an exemplar of good design, with each building individually designed, but achieving harmony by its adherence to the underlying design code.
Roads, parking and pedestrianisation
A range of car parking treatments are used in Borneo Sporenburg: the low-rise terraced houses have internal car ports, 'the Whale' apartment block has an underground car park and there is some on-street car parking.
Where possible, houses facing internal canals have private waterfront access. Pedestrians and cyclists are well catered for and there are three bridges connecting the two peninsulas.
The building layout clearly takes priority over the roads and car parking layout. There is however less variety in the streetscape than West 8 hoped to achieve. Originally West 8 wanted to have around a dozen architects design most of the housing, but to scatter these houses in rows of 5 to 12 units to avoid long, monotonous facades. However, after the first 250 units were built, developers petitioned the city to limit the choices to only the six most popular unit types. The result is that some street fronts are lined with long, horizontally oriented slablike structures rather than the fine-grained rhythm of vertical facades that West 8 planned.
Many of the houses have however used planters and pots to create small areas of defensible space, breaking up the facades. Residents have positioned benches outside dwellings, and toys and bicycles are left safely on the street.
Design and construction
The design of the apartment blocks and the low-rise dwellings are specific to the scheme. The most notable of the apartment blocks is referred to as the Whale because of the unusual shape of its roof, reminiscent of the profile of a huge whale diving under the water and then surfacing. The extraordinary design permits the Whale to offer plenty of views of the surrounding environment. To allow natural light to reach even the lowest floors and the inner courtyard of the building, it is raised on two sides to create a central fold increasing the available light. The shape of the roof follows the route of the sun, drawing a striking shape and letting space and light into the building's heart.
The apartment blocks in Borneo Sporenburg contain collective open spaces in the forms of courtyards or gardens. There is little public green space in the development as a whole, with the water surrounding the docks serving as the dominant public space, open to Amsterdam's boating culture.
The low-rise housing structures are arranged into strict branded blocks which are sub-divided into individual parcels, each containing an inside void that comprises 30 to 50 percent of the parcel. The idea was to drive daylight deep into the volumes of the houses, making smallish spaces appear larger and taking advantage of the water views, while maintaining privacy. Double-height spaces were mandated within canal-side units to draw light and shimmering reflections inside.
Environment and community
Borneo Sporenburg includes a school and housing for the elderly. Reflecting the nation's greater wealth, only 30 percent of the units are subsidized social housing (not long ago 70 percent would have been typical); the rest are market rate. There is a range of accommodation provided with both low-rise dwellings and apartment blocks.
West 8 were committed to creating unique structures within a unified whole. They designed the gardens and other open spaces, as well as the three sculptural bridges that connect the different neighbourhoods on the peninsulas.
From Borneo Sporenburg, it is a 15 minute bike ride to the centre of Amsterdam. The development is clearly urban in character, but lacks local shops and facilities. In time, this may lead to increased car dependency and subsequent parking problems.
