Proud to be Suburban.

Late post-war neighborhoods (1970-2000) face depopulation and decline due to outdated, monotonous planning dominated by low-rise family homes. With focus on city center densification, the periphery holds potential for small-scale interventions. This stagnation contrasts with the need for 100,000 homes annually, a strained healthcare system, and rising loneliness. Given their systematic layout and national presence, these neighborhoods offer opportunities for scalable transformation.

Woensel is one the biggest post-war areas of the Netherlands in need of regeneration. These mostly logistical spaces it contains are systematically embedded in these neighbourhoods studied and form part of the local housing and living culture and the basis for this project. First, the potential of garages as flexible spaces for community engagement is explored. From rigid low-rise to a porous neighbourhood. Secondly, the generic planning is gradually topped-up with modest yet more specific and recognizable architecture. From being a number to being bound to a place. Lastly, the plan addresses the blurring boundaries between work and home life, bringing life and eyes into the street. Former sketchy backdoors become a place for collective living, a place for enterprise. By weaving organic development into the structured planning, a neighbourhood is created that is both complex and legible. These interventions will build in analogy with the garage boxes. an intervention is proposed for each typical ‘intermediate space’, always seeking a balance between generic frameworks and specific architecture. The typical garage box architecture is always reflected in the plinths of the building interventions and the volumetrics build on the small scale of the adjacent row houses, adding new housing types to the area. The transformation is done at the level of the ensemble, with newly designed intermediate spaces as a social and spatial anchor point. By applying this to city peripheries, we can regenerate the largest stock of building in the Netherlands, with it creating a timeproof layer to the larger city that allows societal challenges to come and pass. But more than that, a place that attracts new people that make the conscous choice to live there. A suburban place to be proud of.