Brandevoort part 2, the suburban estates or "Buitens"

The suburban estates or "Buitens" of Brandevoort are themed urban fields separated from each other by green fingers. This makes each suburban estate a distinct spatial unit. In the themed approach of New Urbanism each estate has been given a theme that has been translated into distinct characteristics that have in turn been written down in a Quality Plan that all buildings and public space has to adhere to. Here a view across some fields along the Eindhoven Shipping Canal towards the "Stepekolk". 

The theme for "Stepekolk" is the rural vernacular. The old farmhouses along the narrow country lane of the same name are the reference for an architecture that is best characterised as eclectic vernacular. These whitewashed semidetached houses for instance refer clearly to garden villages of the 1920s and 1930s.

The layout of the streets is reminiscent of historic garden villages. The streets lack the green verges of the "garden village standard", but to be fair in a lot of Dutch examples they are also absent. Small street trees are a must however. The same goes for front gardens. The hedges have been prescribed in the Quality Plan. The same is true of the orange clay roofing tiles that are a feature of this suburban estate.

The detailing in the buildings also varies. It ranges from the truly rural vernacular -shown on the right- with mostly thatched roofs, sawtooth frieze in brick and wooden window shutters, to a garden village aesthetic -shown on the left- with small dormers on low roofs with rounded awnings. These awnings are known as "markies" in Dutch (that name translates as marquis and is derived from an sun sail over an officers tent).

In several places the garden village layout is used to evoke the desired rural feel. Here linked semidetached properties are placed around a large green. There has been some effort to emphasise the corners, but this isn't done with the classic Unwinesque treatment. Here some of the pre-existing trees have been saved and used in the public space.

From the edge of "Stepekolk" the neighbouring estate of "Brand" can be seen across the nature conservation area along the Schootense loop (the stream that ran here before the development of the housing). Again orange clay roof tiles have been prescribed for all roofs on this estate. The detailing, use of materials and colours differs as the theme for "Brand" is colonial housing.

In this estate all the roads have wide grassy verges planted with trees to evoke a New-Holland feel. The houses are spaced wider apart and are arranged in a more formal manner along the streets. The roofline follows the direction of the streets, except on corners were the buildings are often higher with a lunette vaulted roof (or roofs).

The colonial theme is prescribed for all architecture. All houses have a white picket fence along a green verge. The upper section of the building is clad in wood, painted white, above a lower section in brick. Verandas, porches and balconies in wood are added as a feature and ornament. The semidetached house (left) also has awnings on the first floor above the porch balcony. The building has an I-shaped floor plan. The detached dwelling on the right, has several balconies above porches, one of which has been extended to support a lunette vaulted roof.

In the estate "Brand" some of the old buildings of the hamlet of the same name have been incorporated. The name "brand" refers to a peat moor where peat was cut for fuel. This naturally wet area demanded extra measures for a sustainable drainage system after development. So here the verges have been excavated. These dry ditches are used to collect rainwater from the houses an pavements and store it temporarily so it can drain into the soil or run into the stream further along.

The Brandevoortse Dreef (= Brandevoort Drive) is a wide tree lined road that is sunk slightly below the surrounding area. This major road is part of the new ring road of Helmond. Along the banks on each side a free lying cycle path has been incorporated, as is the norm for such roads in the Netherlands. These cycle paths are usually red in colour (this isn't a legal requirement mind you!).Here this ring road separates the estates of "Brand" and "Schutsboom".

The Estate of "Schutsboom" is located east of the ring road and has also been themed. Here the Quality Plan prescribes buildings in the style of "those cosy days gone by" in effect garden village architecture from the 1920s and 1930s.The emphasis on variety can be clearly seen in the variation of roof shapes of these detached properties. All buildings share the brick facades (in natural earth tones or whitewashed) with roofs covered with grey clay tiles.

The little chapel of Saint Anthony, the patron saint for the recovery of lost items, holds a very old wooden statue. The chapel itself was rebuilt after WW2. The chapel was -and is- a pilgrim destination and stands on a large village green. In other places similar greens have been incorporated into the layout of the housing estate (see example on the right). This gives the whole a clear connection to garden city models as defined by Unwin, Muthesius and Feenstra.

The treatment of the streets is rather varied in this section of Brandevoort. More than in other estates pre-existing country lanes have been incorporated into the layout. The original buildings of the hamlet of Schutsboom have also been incorporated into the new housing estate. Here an example of a narrow one-way street with a two-way cycle path -in red- alongside a wide green verge planted with trees.

The architecture follow the Quality Plan very precisely. This is the result of strong quality control by the local council. The buildings in the estate of "Schutsboom" either have an 1930s aesthetic with brownish brick-built facades, white roof trims, dormers and robust (but short) chimneys; or reference the  whitewashed housing of garden villages or workers housing with high gable ends culminating in a chimney.

Some residential squares, resembling garden city closes, have been included in the plan for this estate. The narrow alleys with high -prescribed- hedges on either side evoke this 1930s garden village feel really well. The small green at the centre creates a nice focus for the rather loosely arranged buildings around it. The spatial distribution of the houses has been optimised for efficient land use not for Unwinesque spatial effects.   

The white housing is located in separate sections, so every neighbourhood within the estate has a distinct identity. These houses are rather similar in appearance. They all share the same floor plan but differ in the options chosen by the buyers. So some have dormers, others have roof lights. Some have awnings (again "markiezen"), wooden shutters or larger feature windows. The curve and the situation along an elongated green creates a sense of place.

Another example of a green, here used for playing. More in keeping with historic examples the buildings have been arranged in terraces or as linked semidetached houses. The latter type has been popular in the Netherlands since the 1930s. The houses feature the trademark high end gables, resembling spout gables, dormers and square bay windows on the ground floor. In places these neighbourhoods of Brandevoort come across as a pastiche of historic examples of garden villages, but overall the spatial and visual qualities are well above what is usually found in typical Vinex large-scale housing projects.

Brandevoort part 1, the urban core or "De Veste"

The urban core of Brandevoort was themed as a fortified town. This high-density area only knows terraced housing and apartments. Due to the naturally wet site more room had to be allocated for surface water, so a city moat was created. Here a view of "De Veste" across this moat. The entrances are formalised by buildings resembling gates. The corners have been emphasised by tower-like structures.   

In other placed the moat is more a canal with grassy banks planted with trees. These embankments have been laid out to accommodate leisure activities like walking, fishing and playing. The central canal can overflow to retain more water to prevent flooding in the surrounding built-up areas.

Wide bridges give access to "De Veste" across the water. The planted green embankment with a closed row of family housing along the top is a notable feature on the south side of the urban core. Beyond the water some of the lower buildings with orange roof tiles in one of the "Buitens" are visible.

One of the formal gates (left) that gives access to the urban core of Brandevoort. This historicising type of architecture fits well with the themed approach, New Urbanism and the aesthetic vein of Postmodernism. The buildings contain several flats. The closed front with a continuous building line culminating in one of the "towers" can be seen from the bridge up to the "city gate". There are only a few basic floor plans, but the Quality Plan (known as BKP in the Netherlands) prescribes variety, so no-one can choose the same option in the colour and finish of the facade, roof shape or ornamentation as their direct neighbour.

This mandatory variation is also visible in this wide central street (one of the so-called avenues that cut through the urban core). Again the variation in the width of the building plot is basically non-existent as in historic examples in the Low Countries. Variation is found in the facade, the materials used, ornamentation and the roof.

In accordance with Kevin Lynch's approach to visual cues in the urban landscape the streetscape is livened by landmark buildings. On the left a rather strange tower in a postmodern mix of a medieval weighting house and a neoclassical colonnade. On the right a view down an urban street towards one of the corner towers, meant to resemble the silhouette of a fortified town.

In places the streets widen to form small squares. Here the architecture with a clear neoclassical touch emphasises the round shape by curving round the central public garden.

At present more than half of "De Veste" has been developed. On the western side the urban core is being finished. Although the housing references pre-industrial architecture in appearance, it is built using current methods of construction. The result can be seen on the right with a long front of neoclassical architecture in tightly controlled variety. 

To counteract the urban heat island effect, great attention has been paid to include trees in this "new fortified town". This is conform the historic situation in Dutch water cities, by the way. There the streets and canals were planted, mostly with Elm and Lime. Again the prescribed visual variety is evident.

Gates are used in many places in "De Veste". An arched gateway underneath the bedrooms of a family house gives access to a private parking area within the urban block (left). In a similar fashion, but more ornate (on the right), one of the formal gates that gives access to the central square of the Plaetse. Across the canal another gate building is visible. These connections serve slow traffic.

The central square - known as Plaetse- is boarded on one side by the canal. On it a Victorian market hall was erected as a central focal point for the community. This is a lovely facsimile of such a structure, but I know of no historic towns in the Netherlands that has anything similar.

The canal runs along the central public spaces of the urban core of Brandevoort, creating a sense of place. Much attention has been paid to the bridges so they are easily crossed by pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The canal is lined with trees. The houses along this new canal are amongst the most popular in Brandevoort.

 

Around the Plaetse the building height is greater than in the rest of the urban core. High narrow buildings with apartments stand side by side along the canal and around the square. Variation was also strictly controlled by the municipal quality control officer. The result is a pleasant urban space. Sadly it was rather devoid of people when I was there...

Low and wide arched gateways give access to narrow back streets and can provide a shorter route for slow traffic (i.e. pedestrians and cyclists). Here the public space of "De Lindt" widens to accommodate a canal, that is meant to evoke the stream that once ran here. In Dutch water cities natural watercourses and streams were incorporated into the urban fabric and not filled in or culverted.

The station Helmond-Brandevoort is a typical commuter station mainly servicing neighbouring Eindhoven and to a lesser extent Helmond. The building is less than typical and to my taste not very well designed. It is rather typical of "standard" Postmodern architecture in the Low Countries, that doesn't result in much more than a collage of borrowed ornamentation. In contrast to the well-balanced facades of the housing this building lacks good proportions. Beyond the railway lines a second high-density section of Brandevoort -called "De Marke"- will be developed. 

Brandevoort Helmond, historicism and New Urbanism

North of the village of Mierlo in the Dutch Campine, once lay a vast moor that was gradually brought under cultivation during the latter part of the middle ages. The trees and bushes were cleared, small streams were excavated to provide better drainage and people settled on sandy elevation known as "donk". The formerly boggy conditions became fixed in the local place names with either the suffix -broek (Berenbroek, Diepenbroek, Kranenbroek and the singular 't Broek) or the suffix -voort (Medervoort and Brandevoort). The resulting landscape was a patchwork of enclosed fields around clusters of farms interspersed by oak coppice, meadows and wasteland with rushes and Sweet gale on wetter ground.

After the town of Helmond had been designated a nucleus for growth it needed more room for the planned expansion. So in 1968 Helmond annexed the independent village of Stiphout, and the village of 't Hout (literally at the Wood) from Mierlo for urban expansion westward across the Goorloop stream, as well as the hamlet of Rijpelberg from Bakel and the village of Brouwhuis from Deurne en Vlierden for expansion in the east. It was decided in 1995 that the sparsely populated area west of what was then known as Helmond-'t Hout en south of Stiphout would be the best site for future expansion. The site was elevated to a Vinex-location. Vinex is the shortened acronym for Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra (best translated as Forth Memorandum on Spatial Planning Extra). Vinex is a policy briefing note of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment released in 1988, which designated large outer city areas for large-scale development for housing and some employment areas.

In 1996 the city of Helmond starts to draw up plans for this large new development that will mean Mierlo becomes attached to Helmond. The new development is also larger in area and projected number of residents than the village of Mierlo itself. As Helmond prides itself at being at the forefront in urban planning and architecture, the council invites Rob Krier -an exponent of New Urbanism- to draw up the master plan. His firm of Krier and Kohl also designed Haverleij in Bois-le-Duc, The Citadel in Heemskerk, De Oevers in Roelofarendsveen, The Waterfront in Dalfsen and Gildenkwartier in Amersfoort. Their designs are known for a focus on the pre-industrial city as the favoured spatial and visual model for new developments. As such these projects belong to the aesthetic vein of Postmodernism.

The Vinex-location of Brandevoort (in orange) within the context of Helmond (H), 't Hout (tH) and its "new-town garden village" Brouwhuis (B), and the villages of Aarle-Rixtel (A), Stiphout (S) and Mierlo (M). The large employment areas are typical of centralised Dutch urban planning focussed on compact settlements.

The master plan for over 6.000 new homes for some 17.000 residents and three industrial estates was structured as a central urban core with suburban sections around it that would tie in the new development into pre-existing suburban developments of neighbouring Helmond-'t Hout, Ganzenwinkel and Mierlo. The urban core was proposed as a small fortified city with canals. Developing the site meant that as compensation for the loss of permeable soil more surface water had to be provided. This is known in the Netherlands as hydrologically neutral development and has been practices for centuries. If one wants to develop a wet site or a site in the floodplain, one has to create more space for water, not less (!), to prevent future flooding. As a wet site (Brandevoort means as much as ford near a bog where peat is cut) provisions had to be made for additional surface water as two streams would have to be incorporated to prevent a nearby wetland nature reserve from drying up. 

The site was in part chosen as it was bisected by the existing Eindhoven - Venlo railway. Around a new train station for the commuter train Deurne - Eindhoven the urban core was projected with the moated "city" to the south and a high density extension directly to the north. Further north a three-part business park was projected towards the Eindhoven - Helmond dual carriageway. South, east and west of the "city moat" several suburban neighbourhoods were drawn; each resembling a garden village in layout. To ensure variety numerous architects have been employed to design the houses to be built by a consortium of developers. This sounds like a logical step, but the underlying reason is that thus the whole project can be divided amongst the several developers, that can each employ their own team of architects.

Work started in 2000 and is supposed to finish in 2022 (pre-downturn this was expected to be 2017). The train station Helmond-Brandevoort opened in 2006. At the same time the residents of 't Hout voted to rename their suburb to Mierlo-Hout to reflect the historic ties with neighbouring Mierlo. The name of the train station -opened in 1992- remains Helmond - 't Hout. A ring road for Helmond is also part of the plan for Brandevoort. The connection to the A270 dual carriageway was completed as part of the first building phase of the first phase of development. The housing followed the building of the road and water infrastructure. In 2011 the second connection on the A270 was opened as part of the last building phase of phase 1. The second phase of the development has started and will see the development of more housing and the business park.

Brandevoort is seen as the best example of New Urbanism in the Netherlands. The planners combined the cornerstones of Dutch planning (i.e. compactness by intensive land-use, mixed housing in type and tenure, clear zoning of functions, maximum permeability for slow traffic, counteracting through traffic in residential areas by a hierarchal road system and including surface water and the drainage system from the beginning) with the aesthetic approach of Postmodernism by consciously avoiding functionalism in the design of public spaces and buildings. The design follows the modernist urban fields approach and combines it with the German green fingers approach. The result are clearly defined (sub)urban areas both spatially and stylistically. Each area has been given a narrowly described profile concerning type of housing, building height, appearance, materials to be used and streetscape. These profiles are captioned under a theme, making this development a dream for both developers and real estate agents as they can market an ideal and provide a sense of choice within concise  parameters, something most consumers prefer.

The layout of Brandevoort consist of the central urban core where the facilities will be located: "De Veste". This name meaning "fortification" evokes the theme of the urban core of the development, which aims to give the impression of a 17th century fortified city complete witch canals and historicising architecture. In the marketing Brandevoort is portrayed as an ideal new village, probably as marketing people have been used to doing so for all Vinex-locations.  This central city has a central square, canal, gate buildings and walls with a moat. The street names are also historicising with the central square named Plaetse (literally Place) a name historically linked to a village green in Brabant. Also some narrow city streets were named avenue (Biezenlaan, Statenlaan, Middellaan and Herenlaan) which is another misnomer as an avenue is a wide tree lined street in an urban context. This fake historic town is however well-designed with pleasant streets and public spaces and a well-defined edge and entrances. The urban core north of the station is yet to be built; it will reference 19th century urban extensions. The idea is to produce monumental and stately houses here.

Brandevoort with its themed urban field ach consisting of a certain type of housing that references a historic style and/or type of buildings. The plan comprises of six "Buitens" and two high-density areas: Schutsboom (1), Brand (2), Stepekolk (3), Hazenwinkel (4), Liverdonk (5), Kranenbroek (6), and the urban core of the Veste (7) with De Marke (8) north of the station. Along the dual carriageway (A270) a business park (9) will be developed. The Schootse Loop (SL) a small stream is incorporated into the plan as well as a power line (PL) that was moved to run along a belt road. A medieval chapel of St Anthony (C) was incorporated into the first of the Buitens. Brandevoort sits next to Mierlo-'t Hout (MH), Ganzewinkel (GW) and on the other side of the Eindhoven Shipping Canal (E) Mierlo-North (MN).

The urban core is surrounded on most sides by suburban sections known as Buitens, each separated by green fingers where the landscape can penetrate up to the moat and wetlands around the urban core. Each suburban section is an urban field with a specific theme that translates into a specific type of architecture. Spatially these suburban areas are fairly similar. In places older buildings have been incorporated into these urban fields. This is very notably the case in Schutsboom, Stepekolk and Brand (the old farms of Brandevoort). The name Buiten is actually a misappropriation here as it normally refers to a country estate and not a suburban housing estate.

Each suburban section is filled with a certain type of nostalgic architecture. The Schutsboom Estate was the first of these "Buitens" to be developed. The buildings reference vernacular architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. A small extension has been developed with houses resembling  thatched farms. The neighbouring Brand Estate is characterised by so-called colonial housing in a New-Holland style with balconies weather boarded facades and porches. In Stepekolk all houses have red tiled roofs on low buildings that reference historic farms. The effect is very similar to the Alt Siedlung Friedrich Heinrich in Kamp-Linfort (built from 1907 onwards). The "Buitens" of Hazenwinkel, Liverdonk and Kranenbroek are yet to be built. Liverdonk will be the first. Here semidetached and terraced housing and some apartments will be developed in an effort to create a small town feel, inspired by the historic town of Thorn. Neigbouring Kranenbroek Estate will be developed with similar housing but with higher buildings that will often have white facades. Hazenwinkel will be developed with low farm-like housing in two neighbourhoods around a central park.  

The biggest problem with these centrally planned housing projects is that savvy developers had started buying land at the proposed sites before the decisions were finalised by central government. This takes many years of consultation after all, and developers can act quickly in buying (an option on) land. The city of Helmond forced the developers to trade their land for development rights, so the local authorities could keep a tight rein on the project. The result is a very controlled development with clear quality control.