In responding to the theme of the lecture series ” strategy “, Tsaiher described Boundary Unlimited’s projection of possibilities and alternatives for urban development and of strategies for mixed use, complicated by conflicting interests between city council and housing corporations versus brothel owners in the Red Light District, Amsterdam.

Collaboration: Boundary Unlimited with Changfang Luo

Status: Ongoing

The St. Annen Kwartier, located in the south of the  Oudekerksplein, Amsterdam  is under urban transformation. The area has been famous for its concentration of prositution windows and the long alleys, where the customers can make contact with the prostitutes while walking through them.

Below is the program map done by us, the red area are all prostitution windows at this moment.

There are several major property owners in this area who own most of the windows and are resistent to government’s gentrification act. A lot of buildings are not in used in the upper floors, due to the fact that the owners want to maximize the numbers of windows on the ground floor, therefore leavign the upper floors empty. If the government would start to buy all properties from these owners, it will cost them a lot of millions and at least 5-10 years of hard negotiation.

Below is the birdview of the entire building morphology of the St.Annen Kwartier. It is built by us by 3D software with building drawings from the Amsterdam Panden Archief. (The Oudekerk is located on the top of the image).

We propose a renovation plan for the St. Annen Kwartier by strategically changing the upper floors of chosen properties. Below is the first scenario that is based on buying 5 properties from the private owners and link them by 2 sky bridges. The upper floors can be activated and transformed into restaurant, disco, or event spaces, allowing the public to enter the St.Annen Kwartier from the Oudekerksplein or the St.Annestraat to the roof of these properties. For the rest of the upper floors of other private properties, we suggest to slowly change them into offices, which can serve as noise buffer for the rest of the buildings.

With this renovation plan, new functions can emerge on the upper floors of the St.Annen Kwartier without conflicting with the current prostitution programs. They can even bring each other some extra commercial value. The future transformation of the rest of the prostitution windows can happen gradually, once the agreements are reached between the property owners and the government.

So when you are going to Trompetterssteeg in the coming years,below is what you will see (With people going to restaurant or exhibition crossing on top of you..)

The second scenario is to buy properties along the Dolle Bewijnensteeg and the Trompetterssteeg , from mainly 2 major property owner groups (Frank and Bert Pot, Hans and Michiel) . By only convincing the 2 major owner groups, a large space on the upper floor can emerge by connecting these properties. With our  building investigation into these buildings, we examine that all floors can be leveled to the same without big construction difficulties. With this renovation plan, a large scale public event space can be created, on the upper floors of the properties along the prositution alleys.

For other private properties along the alleys, we propose to transform them into offices, to serve as noise buffer for the rest of the houses. With the interesting relationship with the large scale event space on the other side of the ally, the offices can have extra sptial and promotional quality (See below for the interior impression of the future offices) .

Our vision for the St.Annen Kwartier suggest the government a strategic start by looking into the potential of the existing building morphology and to accept the mix of different functions during the urban renewal process.  It is a more economically sustainable method than to gentrify all prostitution windows at once and to expect new investors to  occupy the empty properties in a short period of time.

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.