CONSTRUCTION OF RESIDANTIAL DISTRICT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
CLIENT: VZW RAAKZAAM
SINT-NIKLAAS / 2021 - PRESENT
IN COLLABORATION WITH SCHENK HATTORI
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Raakzaam Patershoek

CONSTRUCTION OF RESIDANTIAL DISTRICT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
CLIENT: VZW RAAKZAAM
SINT-NIKLAAS / 2021 - PRESENT
IN COLLABORATION WITH SCHENK HATTORI

"Ordinary where possible, exceptional where necessary". Three sites spread around Sint-Niklaas, by using a specific architecture, offer an answer to the question of recognisability, diversity and inclusiveness within care. With our proposal, we mainly want to provide a good home. A good place to live. These places to live will secondarily be adapted in some areas. By making care invisible, we want to support the socialisation of care. In this sense, the recognisability of Raakzaam is a question we did not take too literally. We don't want to build care institutions, but residential neighbourhoods with buildings on the scale of a large family. Where the person is as important as the collective. Vesta's recognisability is generated from the idea of developing a circular structure which allows to be adapted to suit the individual. Here, it is not just about functional needs, but also how the individual can develop psychologically. This concept generated a shifted structure with some significant advantages. What is interesting about this is that the individual's quest determines the architecture, and from there a particular appearance for the building emerges. Three residential buildings and a day-care building are planned on the site at Patershoek. Poot Architectuur is the architect for the day-care building. The typology tries to fit into the context of the "Steenweg-architecture" on the one hand, while at the same time matching the residential buildings. The plan allows the building to be transformed into a residential building in the future: a central stairwell and 4 solid cores serve the surrounding spaces that can easily be transformed as rooms for residents.