Sustainable Building Demonstration project

Town quarter Boerenstreek Soest

Integral quality leads to environment-friendly urban planning

Integral Quality

A new residential community is being built on the northwest side of Soest. Lying nearby beautiful, wooded areas as well as major connecting roads, this community will eventually contain some 750 (mostly low-rise) housing units.
In the zoning plan, municipal preconditions were included that focused attention on ecological and environment-friendly construction, architecture and public safety.
The zoning plan for de Boerenstreek regulates how the pasture land is to be used on the western side of Soest (bordered by the Dorresteinweg, the Veenpad, the Overhees community and the Koningsweg). Since de Boerenstreek lies some distance from shopping and other facilities, the plan is to make this a very attractive community in its own right, but with excellent links to the outside world. Very close by (about 1 km) there are recreational areas and nature reserves.

Quality in Social Housing.
With a project of this size, it is apparently quite possible to arrive at a very attractive variety of housing that conforms with market demands. Considering developments on the local housing market, the choice was made to build almost exclusively single-family homes.

The great demand for affordable rental housing has led to the building of 72 social-sector rental dwellings, which is 29% of the 248 homes. The following differentiations were built:

  • 4 4-room unsubsidised homes with office space
  • 14 3-room unsubsidised homes
  • 37 3-4 room social-sector homes
  • 37 4-room homes with a single government subsidy
  • 39 5-room unsubsidised homes
  • 45 4-room unsubsidised homes

Sustainable Building

Town scale

An important issue for Soest is to prevent further drying-out of the low-lying area on the western side of Soest (nature reserve). Significant for this is that the building construction is begun at as low a level as possible and that the ground water level is kept constantly high. The city will construct a surface water circuit in the new district, including a windmill. This will make sure that the ground water level remains adapted to the seasons.
A Rush field serves as a filtering construction and is included in the surface water circuit. This water purification facility makes it possible for rainwater to drain directly from the roofs to the surface water. For that reason, a large number of the dwellings are connected to a separately constructed third sewage system, in addition to a normal rainwater (from the paved surface) and waste water sewage systems.

Energy conservation

In order to use passive solar energy, the urban plan is set up in such a way that more than 80% of the dwellings are positioned either northeast/southwest or northwest/southeast. By designing varied types of roofs, it was possible to place solar hot water systems on all of the dwellings.

The energy performance is 1.14 (20% lower than the required 1.4). All dwellings have Low-E glass, a low NOx, condensation central heating system and a hot-fill connection in the kitchen for a dishwasher.

Water conservation

Water-saving (6 liter flush) toilet and water-saving shower and taps.

Materials

Compact terrace houses. Brick walls and concrete tiles.
Unpainted wooden frames (Red Cedar). Painted wooden doors and windows (Hemlock). Paint is high-solid. Wooden cladding (Larks). Thermal insulation with mineral wool. Piping without PVC.

Quality

Quality in urban development

The basis of this urban development is a closed outer ring of housing, bordered by an attractive, divided ring road and an inner ring whose horseshoe structure offers an all-round view of the green heart of de Boerenstreek - the community park. The land allocation is spaciously set out and varied because of the interesting block forms which create surprising small squares and pedestrian areas. This, together with the prominent bike lanes, serve to increase public safety. Space is available for safe playing areas, landscaped grounds, individual and grouped parking areas, as well as orderly and easily accessible collection points for sorted household waste.
Many dwellings are situated north-south but houses don't shade each other.

Architectural quality

In this first section of de Boerenstreek, only single-family homes are built. Varied and innovative architecture can be seen:
- both architects used the same form language, bricks and colour schemes.
- the the inner ring of the plan connects all housing blocks.
- the outer ring is closed, the inner ring is open to the park in the centre and the nature reserves.

Police Quality mark

The quality control commission has honoured this project with the 'Police Department Quality Mark for Safe Housing'. This means:
- speed-limiting measures such as the 'woonerf' layout
- an experimental public lighting plan (no dark areas)
- the living areas are situated on the street side
- no blank side walls
- all dwellings will be fitted with burglary-preventive cladding units and locking devices (PR ENV 1627).

The Participants

The City of Soest.
Housing Association 'Woningstichting Soest' (new name: Achtgoed bouwen en wonen)
The architectural firms INBO, Woudenberg and BEAR Architects, Gouda.
Building Contractor Ballast Nedam, Maarssen.
Utility REMU.
SEV (Steering committee for housing experiments).

Our client is: Achtgoed Wonen en Bouwen Soest