45 Residential Low Tech Houses

Object of the work is 45 sustainable low tech houses in the centre of Treebeek. Treebeek is one of the largest garden cities of the Netherlands, which was planned by the architect Leliman with engineers of the Dutch State Mines. Built between 1913 and 1921, it formed a 2.5 kilometer long strip of 1200 workers houses suspended between Brunssum and Hoensbroek, two villages in the south of the Netherlands that grew explosively when coal-mining started to dominate the economy. The centre of Leliman’s urban plan was an elongated double crescent enclosing a park-like square, bordered by trees and low pitched roofed row-houses. In the seventies these houses were demolished in favor of 4 story apartment buildings without elevators. A radical decision that destroyed the urban cohesion and morpho-logical structure of the garden city. Our task was to repair the spatial centre with respect to its genesis without making a slavish imitation of the historical housing. The total project contains 153 houses of which 45 are realized in the first building phase. The program asked for a diversity in typologies. Sustainability has been one of the main objectives in the design process of the renewed centre. Sustain-ability starts by making a build environment that sustains a long lifespan. On an urban level of sustainability we preserved all the existing trees and repaired the green structure by planting new trees. By restoring the urban morpho-logical structure also the durable social cohesion of the neighborhood and its inhabitants will be strengthened. We chose to invest in a prefab low tech building system [Thermeco] that works like a coat that can breathe and adapt to the outside circumstances. In the conditioned environment of the factory, the walls of the houses are assembled. On the building site these wall elements are put together in a very short building time. Also the insulated roof with its skylights and dormers is completely prefabricated. Due to the high thermal resistance R>7,5 m2K/W of the used system, less warmth gets lost and less energy is used. Therefore, the technical installations [for heating] can be optimized to a minimum. In other words technical solutions that speak for themself, instead of complex installations with a long payback time and high maintenance costs.The used materials are all selected for their long lifespan [like ceramics and zinc]. Beside that we used mainly local materials which results in less transportation costs and stimulates firms in the region. The Thermeco building system is a good example: they use a locally available (waist) material as their main resource and recycle it into a high quality building system. The same goes for the only 15mm thick ceramic tiles used for the facade: 15% of the natural resources and energy are used compared to a traditional way of building. The window frames with triple glass are made of different kinds of wood. The choice of wood is based on the position and orientation of the windows