As part of our 25-year anniversary, we’re sharing some projects from our portfolio. This is an urban development plan for Sapaté: a residential area in northeastern part of Curacao.
The plan was executed in 2009. In total there are about 300 homes and six blocks with 12 apartments each. We designed 3 types of low-rise houses for this project, which have been repeated several times – adding up to 100 homes. Our designs are recognizable by their gabled roofs.
The urban plan was re-designed under supervision of Lyongo by the different government departments in 2006, based on the principles defined during a national workshop with all stakeholders in developing neighborhoods in Curacao earlier that year.
Extending the house
The designs were made for our client Domeinbeheer Curacao and we gave them the right to repeat the design free of charge, so that sustainable designs are more available in these private public partnership projects. We also adapted the designs in such a way that house can be built in stages. The idea behind this was to make houses that are available to single parent household which have a limited amount of mortgage. The owner of these so called ‘groeiwoning’ (growth house), buys a one bedroom house with the foundation and plans for a two or three bedroom-house, so when the means are a available they can extend their house.
This principle of extending your house based on the available means and doing it yourself taps in on the Caribbean culture where most people build their own home.
Creating boundaries
The plan was intended to link two neighborhoods together – of social housing and middle-class housing. It had to serve as a kind of bridge between those two neighborhoods, just as we later did with our plan for Montana Abou.
The district is divided into low-rise and high-rise buildings. There is a big protected green area behind the high-rise buildings. We used those buildings as a boundary between the park and the rest of the residential area. But we made sure that the north south connections end at the park, hence making it possible to experience the park from the neighborhood. The park is a large water catchment area for Curacao.
Plan of 2006 for Sapaté
Green ditch
A striking feature of our plan is the line that runs straight through the neighborhood, stitching different parts together. This strip is the main water catchment ditch. These are normally placed behind the houses with a result that they are used to dump garbage. We moved it to the front of the houses, and it was conceived as a place for residents to meet and children to play. Originally it was designed to be 60cm lower than street level, so it would be easily accessible.
During the execution, unfortunately in certain parts the strip was further excavated to a depth of 1 meter, which made it difficult to enter. It also has less greenery than we designed – or actually the green plan has not been executed yet… The trees and plants that you see in some parts are either planted by the house owners or spontaneously grown. It is a shame that often this crucial element of our designs is left out, because trees, and shade are crucial in our endeavor to make neighborhoods where people meet each other.
A nice place to live
We wanted to make Sapaté a pleasant place to live. This was incorporated in the design but also continued during the execution. Fortunately, we were allowed to position every house in this project. This gave us the possibility to mark the intersections by rotating the houses at the intersection which also gives the neighborhood a more open character.
We also wanted to make the homes pleasant to live in. All low-rise homes that we designed have louvred windows for ventilation. You can open these against each other to cool the house whilst keeping mosquitos and burglars out.
Future
While visiting the area in May 2024 we saw that the parking spaces were being created in front of the apartment buildings. Nice to see that the district is still developing.
In the future we would like to start a study into how residents experience our plan and the neighborhood. We know that safety is an important issue in this neighborhood. And we would like to include that as a theme within the research.
