STW0023 – TURNHOUT – Otterstraat – conceptstudy
design: conceptstudy urban renewal project neighbourhood Otterstraat
type: urbanism
client: city of Turnhout
designteam urbanism and open space: Studio Thomas Willemse
experts for social-spatial-urbanism: Endeavour
expert housing and renovation: Domus Mundi
time: 2020 - 2021
The Otterstraat neighbourhood and surrounding area has experienced a downward economic spiral and major housing challenges in recent decades. We looked for impulses trough three lenses:
Housing - Morphologically, the neighbourhood is composed of small row houses, small-scale apartment buildings and commercial properties with residential units on top. The mostly outdated houses provide affordable housing that attracts vulnerable profiles.
Encounters - The district is bustling with socio-cultural organisations hidden behind stately facades. Visually enhancing these organisations in the streetscape and allowing them to claim public space will stimulate interaction.
Work - The area has a large number of residents with an economically vulnerable profile. Educating residents and facilitating access to employment gives the neighbourhood perspective.
With a roadmap, the study describes the path to inclusive development of the neighbourhood. Throughout the process, the lenses on the neighbourhood have been adjusted through fieldwork, interviews, an interactive neighbourhood walk, workshops and design research. From these interactions and this research, 6 concepts emerged that link the reading to the strategies that were translated into concrete actions in a final step.
The roadmap thus sets out the route from the diagnosis of the current neighbourhood through a series of concepts to obtain a new vision for the neighbourhood that can be achieved through actions.