Reconstructing Kanaleneiland winning Jury Assessment Europan 10 Housing Competition

Collaboration: Tsaijer Cheng of Boundary Unlimited with Simona Puglisi, Beatriz Talavera, and Changfang Luo

To the outsiders, Kanaleneiland is commonly associated as a problemmatic immigration neighborhood of Utrecht, with high social rental housing and low social security. The high amount of social rental units usually leads to the lack of neighbourhood awareness. However, to the residences there, Kanaleneiland is their ter­ritory to bound themselves in reaction towards the mass society. Current implementation that emphasize on cultural integration causes discrepancy between terminology and reality, as well as mis- reading among diverse groups. Our project is a down-to earth urban plan in co-operation with a cohe­sive social policy that takes action and deal with the reality on the streets.

http://www.europan.nl/e/europan10/index.html

With the recent urban development of the Leidsche Rijn, the Kanaleneiland will benefit from the new potential housing/office users in the area, which means the settlement of more affluent families, business growth, and employment opportunities. This is a good chance to upgrade the area. Looking at similar urban regeneration cases in the Netherlands, we expect that the land value of this area will raise in the coming years, if pri­vate ownerships are not implemented from now on for the existing residences who belong to the lower income group, they will be forced to leave the area in the future. To ensure that the original residences will have future rights and engagements to the development of the Kanale­neiland, we are taking an all-inclusive approach by implementing a land ownership policy to both the new comers and the original residences, in order to encourage more neighborhood aware­ness and responsibilities among different users and diverse income groups.

We suggest smaller group of people owning smaller land lease unit and multiple phasings of the restructuring processes. This will encourage a gradual & self organised urban renewal process, which can be more easily appropriated by the building users, the developers, and the city. By breaking up the land of the existing apartment slabs into smaller land leasing units, an easier agreement can be pursued by the existing residents, housing corporations, de­velopers and the municipality to re-generate or renovate the building unit. This will trigger more types of negotiable public/private partnerships for each building units.

The collaborative building prototypes include: The Canal House, the Floating Villa, the Studio House, and the Mini-Tower. By partnering with the local government or develop­ers, the existing residences in each building unit can select their favorate ones to develope col­lectivly. When some collective groups  reach an agreement for housing-redevelopment, the new typologies will trigger further program change of the houses next to it, leading to an residential environment that is mixed with new studios, offices, retails. The neighborhood will be accomodating diverse income as well as cultural groups.

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