Architects: Bjarne Mastenbroek and Winy Maas (MVRDV)Client: Koek - Wesseling Families

Project Date:1995 - 1997Location: 124 a/b Koningslaan, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Project Size: 300 m2

Double House

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MVRDV

MVRDV was set up in Rotterdam (Netherlands) in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. In close collaboration the 3 principal architect directors produce designs and studies in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape design. Early projects such as the headquarters for the Public Broadcasting Company VPRO and the WoZoCo housing for elderly in Amsterdam brought MVRDV to the attention of a wide field of clients and reached international acclaim...

Current projects in progress or on site include various housing projects in the Netherlands, Spain, China, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, USA and other countries, a television centre for Zrich, a public library in Spijkenisse (Netherlands), a central market hall in Rotterdam, a culture plaza in Nanjing, China, large scale urban masterplans in Oslo, Norway, Tirana, Albania and a masterplan for an eco-city in Logrono, Spain...

The more than sixty architects, designers and staff members of MVRDV are organized into teams headed by project leaders... Each design team is led by one of the principal architects and a senior architect / project manager...

The work of MVRDV is published and exhibited worldwide and received many international awards.

MVRDV pursues a fascination for radical methodical research: on

density and on public realms

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Bjarne Mastenbroek is one of few dutch architects who integrate natural elements in their designs as often as possible... Mastenbroeks ambition is to give strong spatial and natural qualities also to buildings on urban locations, especially in housing. He emphasizes the importance of the balance between built volume and green open space in the closest neighbourhood.

SeARCH is established in 2002 by Bjarne Mastenbroek and Ad Bogerman. Before SeARCH Bjarne Mastenbroek has worked in the Van Gameren Mastenbroek projectteam which was part of the architectengroep in Amsterdam since 1993. Currently the Executive Board of SeARCH consists of Bjarne Mastenbroek & Uda Visser.

Consisting of 10 international architects, designers and staff members, SeARCH develops architectural and urban projects and does research on architecture, landscaping, urbanism and new building products and materials. SeARCH collaborates with different disciplines to experiment and test the results of collective design sessions in order to give an opportunity to innovative, original and unexpected proposals... Current projects by SeARCH differ from small scale private housing to large scale mixed-use projects in the Netherlands and Europe. Key projects are a new synagogue and an office building in Amsterdam, a watch-tower in Putten, a museum in Enschede (in collaboration w/ Rem Koolhaas), large scale mixed-use projects in Leuven, Belgium and a conference and activity centre in Hillerd, Denmark.

Five floor plans and one longitudinal section

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Side elevation and three sections

Vertical wall sections (above) and horizontal wall sections (left)

front elevation side elevation

Exterior elevation photo Section/perspective sketch

Details of rear facade

Opinions

In a suburban street by a splendid nineteenth-century park in Utrecht, two independent families share a single site. Both wish to combine the finest view of the park with easy access to the street, the garden and the roof. By proposing the house with the least imaginable depth, the program can be stretched up to four or five stories while keeping the garden as big as possible. Interpreting the partition wall as a therapeutic first move towards negotiations between the neighbours and their sometimes conflicting wishes, has given birth to two interlocking dwelling volumes, each richer than the premise underlying them both.

The bedrooms are incorporated in the meandering tops as houses-in-a-house. Both living spaces extend along the facade and provide views of the park. Here extreme differences can coexist: where one occupant wants to be surrounded by the garden, the other can withdraw to the piano nobile. Where the one chooses a salon just past the childrens playrooms, the other opts for a work-cum-bedroom upstairs, and so on. Their mutual dependence at first threatened to paralyse them. But as in the parable of the lame and the blind, together they proved to be more than they could have possibly imagined themselves to be as individuals.

El Croquis, 1997

The home is located in a row of isolated houses at the edge of Wilhelminapark. The facade of the house reveals the subdivision, intersection and complexity of the space it encloses, presenting as its facade a graphic structure reminiscent of the geometries of Theo van Doesburg in an apparently arbitrary arrangement which is a paragon of free architecture. The outer surface plays with transparency and opacity, alternating different types of glass with panels of dark-painted plywood which hide what glass would reveal: the most private parts of the house.

One house may give up volume to the other house next door on one floor, only to take it back on the next level. Only a cross section fully reveals the special nature of this project: different "pieces of space" fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, making up a single whole with the spatial continuum of its interior projected on its faade, like Le Corbusier's early project for the villa in Carthage. The smaller of the two homes, on the left as seen from the road, has its kitchen and dining room on the ground floor, separated by the stairway; a small mezzanine on the next floor overlooks the rooms below and leads into the living room. The bedrooms are on the next floor up: the only closed rooms, along with the bathroom on the top floor, which offers access to a little hidden rooftop patio. The home next door is larger, with an entrance, garage and guestroom on the ground floor; the first floor is completely open, and contains the living room and kitchen; the second floor with its two bedrooms is much smaller.

Above this more rooms of various sizes take back space from the house next door. The rooftop patio is accessed by a withdrawing ladder. The project was originally conceived in cross section. The original idea was a simple vertical subdivision of the volume of the lot; but step by step, the homes gradually intersected, tied together in a box of glass and wood.

In the end, spaces were interwoven without blending together, borders were shifted floor by floor, and alignments were exchanged until the architects settled on this final solution. The dividing wall between the two apartments weaves back and forth like a snake, stretching the possibilities of reinforced concrete to their limit.

Flores Zanchi

As the name of this project suggests, the house is designed for two families. Originally, it was meant for two business people but due to financial constraints, they found another couple to pool their resources in order to make this project possible. Instead of simply splitting the site into halves for each of the two families, the architects designed the houses to be interlocked together three-dimensionally in order to have bigger living spaces that almost stretch across the entire width of the site.

One of the living rooms occupies the entire first floor while the other occupies the second floor. Both families have equal views of the exterior from their living room and both have their own entrances, one at the front of the building and one at the side. Although the families get their own spaces within the house, the garden at the back of the house is shared.

Due to budget restrictions, the exterior of the house is clad with plywood. With time, the house's exterior reddish brown color that appears in most of the magazines and books fades away into a grayish brown. This may have been caused by lack of maintenance and the wear and tear by Mother Nature. The rest of the material for the exterior is glass.

The way the architects located the glass and wood panels defines the space within by using glass for more communal spaces and having wood panels to hide the more private spaces.

Wilma Kwan 2003, updated 2005

How to visit: The house is located on Koningslaan which is on the way to the Schroder house from central station. Either take Bus 3 to Meklenburglaan or if biking from the central train station, head east towards Wilhelmina Park. Once you go through the park, make a right turn onto Koningslaan and it is not too far before you will see the house on your left hand side.

This is a private residence; it is not open to public. The exterior can be viewed from the small park across the street from the house.

distribution of forces distribution of forces on fourth level

party wall and head elevations drainage system

stability in north-south direction windowless facade

KBWW House Conceptual

KBWW House is named (as a MvRDv's habit?) after the initials of it's owners. The Double Villa is one of a row at the Utrecht's city park. Remarkably, the original buyer did not have the means, nor needed the space of the whole lot of ground he bought. Consequently, they searched and found a partner who agreed to take over one third of the space.

This became the main concept of designing the spatial divi-sion of the building: instead of an arbitrary devising line translated into a straight wall, the two neighbors are forced to live spatially with their de-mands and wishes, within the borders of a box. The resulting meandering party wall gives the special character and originality of this villa.

Andrew Ticle

getting neighbourlypassive massing vs.

INTRODUCTION Utrecht double house is designed by the Netherlands architect group MvRdV at the site by the Utrecht city park. The original buyer didnt mean to or need to have whole ground he bought, so that they looked for partner to take over one-third of space. And it became the original idea of site design. According to their wishes of space usage, instead of traditional straight wall divided two dwellings in one site, two neighbors had space intersection to fit their need in space, and their wishes are the main concepts of space transformation [1]. As shown in figure 1, original buyer owns the larger part of building, which is white part, and partner owns the smaller part of building, which is shaded part.

SITE / FLOOR PLAN Basically, as in figure 2, double house is a platonic solid cubic shape with a small part of subtractive form at bottom-right corner. The shape is not completely cubic due to the relationship of site and its neighbor houses. Two sides of neighbors are not parallel to each other and double house can extend its border of box to as closed as to the right side of neighbor. As shown in figure 3, site plan are arranged along with two sides of border of neighbor houses, so that it made the shape of oblong. In floor plan, as in figure 4 through a to e, layout of two family spaces consistently arranged at left and right but different size of layout in each floor. Ground site only use two-thirds of intended floor plan, and two families share equally. Up to first floor most of spaces are arranged as living room space to larger family. On the contrary, smaller family has living room space on most of second floor. The space ratio for two families at third floor switch back again that larger family has larger space. Generally, the ratio of total floor plan is also one-third to two-thirds, which as their shares of ground site.

FAADE / FENESTRATION About the fenestration of double house, most of public spaces have large window facing front and back. Only private space such as bathroom and bedroom have bear wall cover inner space. As floor plan design, represented in figure 5, the bedrooms for larger family are arranged at the second floor; the bedrooms, bathroom, storage are arranged at the first floor, third floor and forth floor, so that these area are shaded in building faade. As the concept of Nolli map, public space are open and white as figure void, and private space are shaded as figure object. The purpose to set the large window facing front and back is because its site is by the city park and the frontal of building is facing the park. Larger window offers better view for both dwellings [2] and both families has equal view from their living room and dining room. Two dwellings have their own entrances: one is at front and the other is at side. Though they have their own space in the house, they have to share exterior space: garden [3].

TRANSFORMATION The zigzagging partition is not come from nowhere. Each of space interlocking in two dwellings is been calculated precisely to meet the initial ratio of space arrangement of one-third to two-thirds. Architects try to use interlock approach to obtain more living spaces stretch across the entire width of the site. As transformed in figure 6 [2], initial division of two families is subject to the proportion. Then space trading is made in following transformation that upper left block is moved to bottom center. After the first attempt to rearrange two spaces, smaller block exchange is considered at the second transformation. Because of the disadvantage of top two blocks exchange lead one family to lost top floor and roof space, another attempt is made to keep roof. But third transformation also cause the result that one dwelling only has useful space centralized at the third floor. Newer compromise approach is only change more smaller blocks from bottom-left toupper-right. It leads the final sketch model as shown as the diagram in bottom-left at figure 6. After main shape is obtained, few specific blocks swap between two dwellings to balance the private shaded parts in elevation. At the final transformation we can see that whole interlocking spaces are asymmetric, even no partial symmetry.

TYPOLOGY General speaking both sides of dwelling have linear organization along with the staircase bottom-up. Assuming there is a plane formed by y-axis and z-axis, all living spaces can be reached with shortest distance from central plane, and each floor can easily intercommunicate to each other through central plane. To analyze more detailed about organization of house, exploded diagram can be applied not only for organization, but can also help understand about building structure. As demonstrated in figure 8, the massive wall on the side of building provides structure and organization. Two staircases in dwellings also represent the main axis of building circulation [4].

STRUCTURE Double house has special zigzag- ging partition structure hanging the living spaces and private spaces like bedrooms and bathrooms in the air without column structure support. The mechanical support and construction procedure must be designed carefully. In double house component model which is built by Illinois Institute of Technology demonstrated the procedure and mechanical design [5]. Shown in eight step model in figure 9 through a to h, site model is the first one, then at the second step model in figure 9b main walls go up at two edges of site. Dividing walls in figure 9c is the first and main structure challenge in the project that only two walls at the ground floor support whole 4 floors. In figure 9d, small box of bedrooms hang on two sides of edge walls with only support from walls. The gravity and bad equilibrium points might cause the structure problem as shown in figure 10. In diagram the blue part are the support of component, and the orange part are the possible collapse point in each box and each turn on the dividing wall. In component model and diagram shows the potential mechanical problem but it may have been fixed by stronger material such as steel frame structure. Those are the information which can not be presented in diagram. In figure 9e, the construction kept going to install groups of small spaces such as bathroom and closet. By now most of the living space is shaped. In figure 9f, vertical circulation is formed by installing the staircase in both dwellings. After roof, windows, and few small walls are done, the project was complete. Actually the structure has its own design of mechanical balance. In figure 11a to c [1], a simple design of diagonal frame across different plane from one edge to another distributes the force and weight from top to the ground, which can be seen in figure 12. Because of the design of cross frame structure, force not only distributes horizontally and vertically, but also goes diagonally to prevent the structure failure from enormous force gather in one week point. A triangular mechanical structure is formed in figure 11a, so that the main support to smaller dwelling is reply on this triangular distribution design. The main support to larger dwelling is shown in figure 11b. A column in driveway provides important support to right part of structure. The force is shifting from center to side and distribute the force to two ways to both center support and side support. In figure 11c, the support from edge walls and dividing wall distribute the force vertically. Combining these three distribution design any force from any place in the house can successfully relay to the ground either go vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. These cross frame structure complement the week of last force distribution design and its disadvantage shown in figure 10.

Sishe Chin

Models, digital (top) and physical (bottom), Sul Ram Han

Pg.1 http://digilander.libero.it/studiolenci/Ricerche/0%20linguaggi1.htm and http://www.floornature.com/progetto.php?id=4374&sez=30Pg.2 http://www.mvrdv.nl/#/officePg.3 http://www.biotope-city.net/artikelen%20editie1/english/Mastenbroek_eng.htm and http://www.search.nl/Pg.4 http://digilander.libero.it/studiolenci/Ricerche/0%20lin-guaggi1.htmPg.5-9 Levene, Richard C. MvRdV 1991-1997: Casa Doble en Utrecht. El Croquis 86 (1997): 122-133.Pg.10 http://www.flickr.com/photos/thom_mckenzie/Pg.11 http://www.floornature.com/progetto.php?id=4374&sez=30Pg.12-13 Levene, Richard C. MvRdV 1991-1997: Casa Doble en Utrecht. El Croquis 86 (1997): 122-133.Pg.14-15 http://www.floornature.com/progetto.php?id=4374&sez=30 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thom_mckenzie/ Pg.16-17 http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/twofamilyhouse/Pg.18-19 http://old.arch.ethz.ch/moere/mvrdv/index.htmlPg.20-23 http://pds8.egloos.com/pds/200803/24/74/dou-blehouse.pdf Pg.24 https://www.csupomona.edu/~srhan/2008/06/mvrdv-double-house.htmlPg.25 Levene, Richard C. MvRdV 1991-1997: Casa Doble en Utrecht. El Croquis 86 (1997): 122-133.

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