Powerhouse Company have won a competition to create a new mixed-use hub in Eindhoven, Netherlands. For the competition, Powerhouse teamed up with landscape architects ZUS and developer Amvest to design a trio of skyscrapers forming the winning proposal for a new urban plaza, called “District E”. The 70,000 square meter proposal will be located next to Eindhoven Station.
The flexible construction and installation technology of District E anticipates the future growth of Eindhoven as a sustainable, innovative and economic hotspot. The seamless integration of architecture and landscape design guarantees a new public space filled with activity and a wide spectrum of green spaces – Powerhouse Company.
Three tall towers collect in corresponding plinths, ranging from 76 to 158 meters in height. The towers will combine a residential program of approximately 450 homes, 20 percent of which will be social housing. A mixture of public amenities will be added, ranging from a hotel, shops/restaurants, a student study center and exhibition spaces. District E’s new “city plaza” aims to balance the 17th-century buildings from the old Eindhoven center alongside the large-scale 20th-century projects near the railway.
Powerhouse described the use of the plinths as a tool for the skyscrapers to be set back, ensuring that “Eindhoven station, a national monument, is honored by giving it space and relating to its scale.” A diagonal axis within the new urban plaza is another key element to the design, as described by Powerhouse:
An essential and defining gesture in the design is the diagonal axis that visually connects the station and the ‘Philipstoren’, a monument and symbol of Eindhoven’s industrial and technological heritage. This axis cuts through the ensemble and in-so-doing linking the station’s square, the new city plaza and the '18 September' square like a set of beads on a thread - Powerhouse Company.
With offices in Rotterdam, Beijing, and Munich, the architecture office has a portfolio of mixed-use projects including inSports Beijing to the Maastricht Pathé theater. The firm also beat out a bevy of heavyweight contenders in 2014 with their competition-winning proposal of a 100m observation tower in Çanakkale, Turkey.
News via: Powerhouse.
