This competition entry can be seen as a clear example of our design approach in which full integration of urbanism, landscape design and architecture is vital. The area is situated at the edge of the highly urbanized valley bottom and the slope of the beautiful, more rural surrounding hills. At the back of the area an old railroad, due to be converted into a tramway, can be found. Its physical infrastructure, a 10-meter high dam, blocks the actual transition towards the hill. It creates a dark, unused no-mans-land and causes the area to be orientated to one side only. We consider this an important challenge in the design. The area required a parking garage for 450 cars. Normally considered another negative issue to be dealt with in urban design, parking is mostly solved by realizing it underground. In our plan, however, we use the negative aspect of the parking garage to solve another important negative aspect. By realizing the parking garage above ground it proved possible to create a sloped residential landscape, which connects with the level of the future tramway and, more important, with the hills. By dividing it in terraces the plan is organized in public, shaded, and private spaces that, since they are facing south, are well provided with sun and daylight. The residential buildings on the slope are orientated and designed in a manner that view, sunlight and air circulation are optimized. By concentrating most of the residential program on the sloped landscape a large and clearly defined public space can be realized at the foot of it as the heart of the area where all shared and public facilities are concentrated. It connects a beautiful old park, the refurbished hospital building and a linear building which, carefully cut in parts matching the existing scale, defines the connection with surrounding existing urban fabric. The title of the plan is local dialect for a terraced landscape connected by stairs, typical for the area, to which our plan refers to design and materialization.

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