Samenvatting

‘Makers Block, from craft to consumer in M4H district.’ The design of Makers Block connects the makers workplace with housing along three lines: living adjacent to making, living with making and living next to making. This happens on top of a double high plinth with studios in an ensemble of buildings, complemented by a free standing industrial workshop and a yard as green space. Profiting from its corner position in the urban situation, the ensemble mediates between craft and consumer but also functions as a gateway to other makers initiatives in the M4H district. Transparency of the block is heightened by a diagonal route running from the outer corner to the inner courtyard, where the other streets also converge. A large basement runs underneath the block, which offers parking and multiple other spaces for the makers community. A similar, smaller collective space is the shared studio floor on the first living floor in one of the blocks along the ring road. The different formulas for living and working are demonstrated in a variety of floor plans and space types. The units in the different blocks are connected by galleries and sky walks, leading to a central vertical stairway and elevator to enable graded entry. As fine-grained as the functional and spatial organization in the block is the execution in concrete and glass of the ground floor structures, and the wooden beam structure and finish of the upper floors. The design quality of the architecture, and no less the prismatic quality of the urban plan, equally dedicated to places for everyday use, is felt all along with the project. Fittingly, the project testifies to architecture as a craft too.