Delft 1:1
by: Sofie Angelie Hovgaard, Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen & Harald Hermogenes Batol Bjørkum
Delft 1to1 is a project of three master students who did research of the housing stock of Delft for global 1to1. http://www.sydneyarchitecturefestival.org/program/the-global-1-1
In a time period of increasing housing prices and densifying cities, the spatial needs for living are challenged within the private domicile. Even in the short history of single-bedroom apartments in Delft, a small city not subject to the same pressures as New York or Amsterdam, there exists considerable variety. We wish to explore the question of how the historically variable housing stock of Delft adapts to accommodate demographic change and cultural shifts?
The Delft selection consists of three post-war single-bedroom apartments representing the 1960s, the 1980s and the 2010s.
Building single-bed apartments was rare in the 1960s as aged people preferred all-inclusive elderly homes and young people opted for student housing with shared facilities. The single bedroom apartments of the 14-storey Sterflats building that aimed at a lower middle-class rental market, are a sophisticated product of the decades long rationalisation of large-scale construction.
In 1976 the Minister of Housing acknowledged desires and aspirations of young singles and couples who sought to enter the housing market. The Molslaan building is one of the so-called Van Dam-dwellings that were part of small scale inner-city urban renewal, the response to decades of modernist urban planning. The latest generation of single-bedroom apartments is student housing, the 15-storey Balpol3 building is influenced by a housing agenda initiated by the Delft University of Technology policy of internationalisation.
