HAASJE OVER
The residential tower with 185 social housing units - Strijp-S - is part of the transformation of the Strijp-S district in Eindhoven, the site of the former Philips factories. Part of a unique industrial heritage and inner-city redevelopment. With the departure of Philips, from 2000 the plan was taken up to develop the Strijp-S district into an incubator for the creative sector, and both housing and companies in the creative sector are located there.
Today, the urban planning and architectural features of Strijp-S still form a unique mental connection to history. The arrival of multinational company Philips, founded in 1891, transformed Eindhoven from a small collection of villages into a city. All the different buildings of the factory were linked together like an efficient machine. However, the physical connection between the buildings has been lost over the years. The new Strijp-S residential tower refers to the site's history by bringing back this physical connection and making it visible.
The seventy-metre-high residential tower, as it were, grabs around itself with two cantilevered side ‘arms’ and makes connections with its surroundings; the Anton building on the one hand and the skate hall on the other, on Leidingstraat.
The nineteen-storey tower has 135 loft flats of fifty square metres each. The residences are characterised by one large panoramic window - with a deep window sill - that fills almost the entire outer wall and connects the residence to its surroundings. Together with the high storey height (3.6 m), a very efficient but above all spatial dwelling has been created within a relatively small area.
The dimensions and scale also reference the existing industrial scale of the area.
In the double, two-storey arm above the skate hall, fifty maisonette houses of also fifty square metres have been realised. The U-shape of the cantilevered section stems from the noise load on the facade. It creates a noiseless inner area - the patio - from which ventilation can take place.
This also provides a generous collective outdoor space for the residents.
On the 10th floor of the tower are communal indoor and outdoor spaces, where residents have the opportunity - privately or collectively - to organise all kinds of activities, these spaces function as extra-large living rooms, where, for example, parties or large dinners can be given but where yoga classes can also be organised. The air bridge - at this height - between the residential tower and the roof garden of Building Anton - provides additional public outdoor space and meeting space for the residents of the new tower. All these different types of public spaces aim to boost the social cohesion, vibrancy and quality of the place.
The materialisation of the building also refers to the industrial history of the site; The fully prefabricated - red pigmented - concrete façade of the tower, which owes its plasticity to the rib structure, refers with its brutalist look to the concrete Philips buildings of the 1970s. The terracotta colour is a reference to the existing social housing - the Philips village - in the area, with its orange tile roofs. The striking colour also makes the building stand out from the predominant grey buildings in the area.
