Project
Community House
Category
Best Project of Residential Estate
About the project
Facing the main public square of Knokke-Heist, the Community House will integrate housing, retail, communal activities and public services. To reconcile two strikingly different scales – a tall tower in a low-rise neighbourhood – we imagined our project as a stack of floor plates, each hosting a group of one-family homes with a few shared glasshouses. The contrast between low-rise surroundings and massive arrangements of cargo containers in Europe’s second biggest commercial port (located further to the south) is also reflected in our design. The result offers a positive alternative to the 1970s typology known as the ‘Atlantic wall’ – a continuous wall of tall residential mono-blocks built along the Belgian coast and blocking visual access to the beach to all houses situated behind them. Designed as an assembly of individual homes, our project celebrates diversity and creates a friendly relationship between people and architecture.
Location
Boereboomplein, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
Project design year
2019
Applicant and authors of the project
Jakob+MacFarlane.
Architecture and design practice founded in 1998 in Paris and led by Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane. Centred on innovation and committed to responding to the environmental and other challenges of the 21st century, the practice is renowned for the buildings that have become true urban markers. The multicultural, multidisciplinary team is supported by a global network of experts aimed at developing solutions tailored to project-specific challenges.