E14 Winning Teams Portraits/Interviews

Buurtmakers

Amsterdam H-Buurt (NL) - Runner up

Team Representative: Arie Gruijters (NL) – architect 
Associates: Ryosuke Yago (JP) – architect, Mircea Munteanu (RO) – urbanist architect

See the complete portrait here
See the complete listing of portraits here

R. Yago, A. Gruijters & M. Munteanu 

In our view, the questions for the site are: how can it evolve beyond the current mono-functional neighbourhood, which is the consequence of the CIAM-inspired materialization of the social welfare system in the Netherlands at the time, and snap out of this deadlock, achieve more urbanity, and attract new flows of activities and people, all of this while working with the underlying potentials, not denying certain qualities of the existing facilities. 
We see this piece of Bijlmermeer as a territory of experimentation today, having the space to envision a radical shift from mono-functionalism towards a re-integration of creativity and production and life in the city. For our project, we took the split between the different modes of transportation as a starting point, the critical mass of housing units as a potential and proposed containers to house a myriad of functions as an additional, as a necessary ingredient to facilitate mixed use, and to populate beyond the project site, into the adjacent mono-functional business district Amstel III.