EAST WEST AT HOME IN SON AND BEST

Exploring area developments in Nieuwe Woud

Strategic area development provides a good opportunity to create a residential environment between Best and Son and Breugel that complements what already exists in the surrounding urban area. The key to the planning of the area is a balanced harmonisation and interweaving of red and green. There is an urgent need in the region for more (readily accessible) rural and green residential environments, whereby an integral approach in which the housing assignment is combined with landscape development, makes it possible to realise this ideal living in the Nieuwe Woud.

We demonstrate what this might look like in three spatial scenarios for the area, in the first of which, Stepping Stones, housing and landscape developments go hand in hand in the most direct form bringing the residents into 1:1 contact with the green living environment. Developments take place on the basis of availability of land and an elementary rule: half of the land to be developed should be planted with trees. The other half is for development.

In the second scenario, Framework, trees are planted along all the existing and planned roads. The degree of importance of a road in the access hierarchy, moreover, determines the number of rows of trees. In this way, in the course of time, a clear, strong landscape network is realised that divides the area into rooms. This will be accompanied by attractive diversity and variation arising between 'living rooms' and rooms that retain an agrarian zoning.

In the third scenario, Hamlets, the housing programme is divided into twenty smaller units with a clear spatial boundary and at a sufficient distance from the other hamlet. The intervening area retains its agrarian zoning. Each hamlet has its own identity based on a specific living environment and housing typology.