Cube house

Cube houses

The cube house (also cube flat , tree house ) is a design pattern for residential buildings , which by the architect Piet Blom based on cube-shaped standing on a corner of building structures has been developed. In Helmond and Rotterdam , two building complexes were built that were put together in a modular manner from these structures.

architecture

View from the cube down to the street

Piet Blom made the first designs for the cube houses in 1973/74. Blom saw the houses as trees with a “trunk” for vertical access and the residential unit as a “treetop”.

The trunk has a hexagonal plan and consists of three reinforced concrete pillars, which are completed with concrete blocks. There is a storage room on the ground floor and an external staircase leads to the higher entrance. There are two other variants in Rotterdam: One of the pantry and entrance are both on the ground floor and the stairs are internal. In the other variant, three houses share a staircase and a shop is located on the ground floor. The pantries are elsewhere in the complex.

The cube with an edge length of 7.5 meters is tilted and stands on a corner so that three sides point down and three up. Blom spoke of "street house" and "heaven house". The structure and the floor panels are made of in-situ concrete , the exterior walls are wood frame construction built of pine. The floor area is around 100 m² (without the trunk). All buildings are supplied by a central heating system.

The cube has three floors. At the bottom there is a living and dining room and the kitchen, an office or hobby room and a toilet. The middle floor contains two bedrooms and a bathroom. On the top floor there is a pyramid-shaped room with windows on all sides, which can be used as a bedroom, children's room or sun room.

Blom saw several buildings as a group as “forest” or “village”, as a defined and readable unit in the city.

Helmond

Cube houses in Helmond

In 1975 three houses were built in Helmond for test purposes. In 1977 a further 18 houses were completed there, grouped around a cultural center.

On December 29, 2011, the cultural center was destroyed by a major fire. Several of the cube houses were also badly damaged.

Rotterdam

Blue tower and cube houses in Rotterdam

Cube houses in Rotterdam, detail

In 1978 Blom made the first drafts for the project in Rotterdam. It should include 74 cube houses and a cultural center; however, the program was reduced. Due to financial difficulties it took four years to start construction in 1982. In 1984 the planned 51 cubes were completed, three of the cubes are larger than the standard size. 38 cubes are residential units, the rest belong to the school that is part of the program or to the shop units. There are a total of 14 retail units on the promenade level, plus a restaurant and other business premises elsewhere in the entire complex. There is also a children's playground on the promenade level. Together with the Blaaktower apartment house - also by Blom - the cube houses form an urban ensemble.

The group of buildings spans a busy street and acts as a pedestrian bridge . It was an urban development goal to bridge the traffic artery and to equip this bridge with buildings. The lower promenade level is open to the public. The floors above are private. The residents overlook the public space through the inclined windows.

All 38 residential units were already sold before completion. In the meantime, the architecture academy used two cubes. For five years the shops were used as fashion boutiques. In recent years the retail units have been rented out as offices or studios. One of the cubes is accessible to visitors.

In 1997/98 extensive renovation work was carried out. The roofs were clad with zinc and some windows were replaced. The undersides of the cubes have been repainted. In 2001 the promenade level was completely renovated by the city of Rotterdam.

Successor buildings

Ben Kutner, an architect from Ottawa , bought the rights to Blom's design through his company UniTri Technologies Inc. In 1996 he had an exemplary house built based on the UniTriModule on an urban wasteland in Toronto (address: 1 Sumach Street, Corktown, Toronto) . It consists of three cubes with an edge length of 7.3 meters; the total floor space is approx. 111 square meters. He had to wait ten years for the building permit . Kutner's plan was to later dismantle the building and integrate it into a large-scale housing project in the port area that would consist of hundreds of cubes. However, due to a lack of investors, this never happened. Kutner lived in the building himself for a long time. The owner of the property resold it, and the architect disputed the ownership of the house in court. Today (2009) the outside is covered with advertising over a large area.

literature

Renate Fritz-Haendeler: Tree houses for a change? Piet Blom's article on the tree house concept in Daidalos, ISSN 0721-4235 , 1987, No 23, pages 84-89