In today’s economic climate with housing production at a record low, it might seem odd to devote a publication to the luxury city apartment. Yet over the past few years, this very sector is where there have been surprising innovations in housing design. While the bulk of product-ion entails the repetition of a few standard […]
DASH #02 – The Luxury Apartment
The second issue of DASH focuses on the emergence of the luxury city apartment. The articles range from historical explorations of luxurious apartments built in Paris and London in the late 19th century and the full-service apartments
realized in The Hague in the early 20th century to the emergence of enclaves for the wealthy in Brazil. There is also an article comparing the Dutch market with the market in Berlin and an account of the turbulent history of a luxury apartment complex in the Netherlands.
The power of the market and the role of developers is investigated in a discussion with Huub Smeets, CEO of Vesteda residential property developers, while the architect Winka Dubbeldam sheds light on the situation in New York. The projects discussed, including several recent examples in the Netherlands, are documented in detail.
The residential layouts, the collective spaces (entrance foyers) and the services and amenities in the luxury appartments are subject to specific requirements. What does this imply for the building and for the relationship between the building and the surrounding city?
With contributions by Monique Eleb, Dick van Gameren & Christoph Grafe, Vincent Kompier and Paul Meurs, among others Including projects by Herzog & de Meuron, awg architecten, Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza and Auguste Perret.
CONTENT
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Essays
An Un-Dutch Housing Experiment
This brief but colourful history of a project in Amsterdam’s Oostelijk Havengebied recounts the trials and tribulations of architects and commissioners in developing an initially prestigious and unique building.
A comparison between the supply and quality of luxury city apartments in the cities of Amsterdam and Berlin leads to remarkable conclusions regarding the effects of local historical differences and the differences between a tight and ample market.
The Stacked Luxury of São Paulo
An overview of the twentieth-century tradition of apartment buildings in São Paulo, which among other things is characterized by the presence of collective programmes, with special attention for recent commercial projects.
Taking the famous Albert Hall Mansions apartment complex as case in point, this essay describes and analyses a new typology in nineteenth-century
metropolitan London, paying special attention to the relation between architectural aspects and a new housing culture.
‘Soft Modernization’ during the Interbellum
Meticulous historical research shows that the qualities of the middle-class apartment were relegated to the background with the rise of public housing, whereas this typology offers departure points for satisfactorily accommodating contemporary urban lifestyles.
Interviews
Interview with Huub Smeets
Developer Huub Smeets responds to questions on current developments in the market for luxury city apartments, including the importance of specific service facilities and the international character of the market.
Interview with Winka Dubbeldam
Architect Winka Dubbeldam responds to questions on current developments in the market for luxury city apartments, including the importance of specific service facilities and the international character of the market.
Plan Documentation
The plan documentation for the luxury city apartments in this second issue of DASH consists of a series of historic and recent, national and international projects, which we believe are representative and classical examples of the luxury apartment building. We looked abroad for the majority of our selections. In cities such as Chicago, New York, […]
The rise of privatized luxury domains, combining private residential, collective and commercial functions, has become unstoppable in Brazilian cities. Described as condomínios fechados, these impenetrable, closed enclaves are in effect vertical urban neighbourhoods. The Hygiénopolis neighbourhood in São Paulo marked the start of this development in the twentieth century. Along with their collective and commercial […]
40BOND is a complex and contradictory experiment that anticipates a new type of building: a combination of townhouse and apartment building, a so-called diversité d’habitation(Domus 910, 98). Its mix of ingredients includes: dwelling type, artfully applied materials and a ‘close reading’ of the urban context and its graffiti ‘tags’. The building is a radical reinvention […]
What makes Detroit special is the discretion with which an impressive and ambitious programme has been inserted into the urban fabric of the Amsterdam Eastern Docklands. The ‘luxury along the river IJ’ development consists of a big assortment of rental apartments (82 units, 106 to 238 m2, with rents ranging from €1,500 to €5,000 per […]
Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza had intended Torres Blancas as a logo for construction company Huarte. Juan Huarte, who built some of Spain’s most prominent buildings in the 1960s and 1970s, was the initiator behind the ‘white towers’, the plural indicating that the original plan provided for two towers. Only one was built; the other […]
Lake Point Tower is situated on North Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, just north of the Chicago River. The foot of its Y-shape points northwards and overlooks the city (west) and Lake Michigan (east). With its undulating glass structure, the 197-m, asymmetrical tower block is based on two Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designs: […]
The most striking housing development in The Hague during the interwar period was that of the ‘residential hotels’: large apartment buildings, designed especially for people returning from the Dutch East Indies, who were used to the luxury of staff but were now unable to afford it. Residential hotels like Huize Boschzicht, Parkflat Marlot, de Nirwanaflat, […]
At the start of the twentieth century, Dutch building regulations placed severe restrictions on high-rises. The maximum number of storeys in Amsterdam was four. Not surprisingly then, plans for high-rise buildings never left the drawing-board. The general public was not in favour of high-rises and cherished the ideal of the detached house with a private […]
Auguste Perret (1874-1954) did not shun contradictions, neither in his finished work nor in his writings. Twin concepts such as frame and infill, order and chaos, and permanent and transient play an important role in both his theoretical treatises and his building practice. Perhaps this love of polar opposites explains why the brilliant student Perret […]
Albert Hall Mansions, directly adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall in the exclusive London neighbourhood Knightsbridge, consists of three blocks of luxury apartments. They were designed by architect Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912), who received the commission in 1878, two years after he had been hired to draw new façades for a design by architects Driver […]