Education

The city of Maassluis transforms apartment buildings into terraced houses

Housing association, Maasluis, attempts to transform small apartment buildings, which are difficult to rent, into single-family dwellings. Every two weeks, PhD-student Ton Kowalczyk visits Maassluis to talk with the demolition contractors and to take photos of this innovative project.

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High costs

“Designers of cars and computers have already been taking recycling into account for years. In contrast, architects are so arrogant that they think their buildings will last forever,” says Ton Kowalczyk. Architects, therefore, aren’t interested in dismantling techniques. At TU Delft, there’s very little knowledge available about the subject. “Most knowledge about safely dismantling buildings is in the heads of the demolishers. Happily, they provided practical courses and I followed one.”

In contrast to what architects presume, in practice, buildings don’t last forever. Housing association Maassluis, for example, owns 2,500 apartments with small rooms and insufficient sound and energy insulation. In the year 2000, nobody wants to live in these apartments.

Therefore, the local housing association decided to re-use three apartment buildings by removing the two top floors. The remaining part of the building, mainly the floors and the partitioning walls, are re-used for terraced houses.

It%s one of the first projects of its kind in the Netherlands and so it is also a learning project. The demolition contractor faces unforeseen problems, according to Kowalczyk. One of the first and most important problems encountered is that the apartment building was not built as it was designed. The overlapping of the floors and the partitioning walls, for example, was sometimes much less than expected. This can lead to dangerous situations, because, when a floor is at the edge of a wall, small movements are enough to make the floor collapse. And small movements always occur when a building is being dismantled. The demolition contractor, therefore, had to suspend the dismantling to take extra safety measurements.

Six-lane speedway

Regulations may also cause problems. Nowadays, the floors that divide two different houses have to be 22 centimetres thick, while those in Maassluis are only 18 centimetres thick. The partitioning walls were also too thin. However, introducing another wall in front of the existing wall could solve this problem.

For most technical problems there are possible solutions. The cost of re-using the building materials is actually the biggest problem the housing associations face. Re-using the construction in the Maassluis-project will probably be more expensive than building totally new houses, Kowalczyk predicts.

Dutch society, however, can’t go on producing so much demolition and construction waste. Each year, the quantity of waste produced can be used for a foundation for a 250 kilometre, six lane speedway. Kowalczyks solution: Architects should take into account the possibility of dismantling when designing buildings, which make these kinds of operations a lot cheaper.

For improving the sustainability of the society it is more important, however, to build houses that need less energy when they are in use, says Kowalczyk. Building and demolishing houses accounts for only ten percent of the total energy used during the complete lifecycle of a house (90% is used while house is being lived in, for heating, lighting, etc). “TU Delft, which claims to work on sustainable solutions for society, should do more fundamental research about building houses that use less energy during their complete lifecycle.”

Each year, the quantity of waste produced can be used for a foundation for a 250 kilometre, six lane speedway.

The floors were severly damaged by the hoisting of demolition waste.

Extra safety measurements were needed, iron tubes were placed to prevent the houses from collapsing like a house of cards.

Housing association, Maasluis, attempts to transform small apartment buildings, which are difficult to rent, into single-family dwellings. Every two weeks, PhD-student Ton Kowalczyk visits Maassluis to talk with the demolition contractors and to take photos of this innovative project.

High costs

“Designers of cars and computers have already been taking recycling into account for years. In contrast, architects are so arrogant that they think their buildings will last forever,” says Ton Kowalczyk. Architects, therefore, aren’t interested in dismantling techniques. At TU Delft, there’s very little knowledge available about the subject. “Most knowledge about safely dismantling buildings is in the heads of the demolishers. Happily, they provided practical courses and I followed one.”

In contrast to what architects presume, in practice, buildings don’t last forever. Housing association Maassluis, for example, owns 2,500 apartments with small rooms and insufficient sound and energy insulation. In the year 2000, nobody wants to live in these apartments.

Therefore, the local housing association decided to re-use three apartment buildings by removing the two top floors. The remaining part of the building, mainly the floors and the partitioning walls, are re-used for terraced houses.

It%s one of the first projects of its kind in the Netherlands and so it is also a learning project. The demolition contractor faces unforeseen problems, according to Kowalczyk. One of the first and most important problems encountered is that the apartment building was not built as it was designed. The overlapping of the floors and the partitioning walls, for example, was sometimes much less than expected. This can lead to dangerous situations, because, when a floor is at the edge of a wall, small movements are enough to make the floor collapse. And small movements always occur when a building is being dismantled. The demolition contractor, therefore, had to suspend the dismantling to take extra safety measurements.

Six-lane speedway

Regulations may also cause problems. Nowadays, the floors that divide two different houses have to be 22 centimetres thick, while those in Maassluis are only 18 centimetres thick. The partitioning walls were also too thin. However, introducing another wall in front of the existing wall could solve this problem.

For most technical problems there are possible solutions. The cost of re-using the building materials is actually the biggest problem the housing associations face. Re-using the construction in the Maassluis-project will probably be more expensive than building totally new houses, Kowalczyk predicts.

Dutch society, however, can’t go on producing so much demolition and construction waste. Each year, the quantity of waste produced can be used for a foundation for a 250 kilometre, six lane speedway. Kowalczyks solution: Architects should take into account the possibility of dismantling when designing buildings, which make these kinds of operations a lot cheaper.

For improving the sustainability of the society it is more important, however, to build houses that need less energy when they are in use, says Kowalczyk. Building and demolishing houses accounts for only ten percent of the total energy used during the complete lifecycle of a house (90% is used while house is being lived in, for heating, lighting, etc). “TU Delft, which claims to work on sustainable solutions for society, should do more fundamental research about building houses that use less energy during their complete lifecycle.”

Each year, the quantity of waste produced can be used for a foundation for a 250 kilometre, six lane speedway.

The floors were severly damaged by the hoisting of demolition waste.

Extra safety measurements were needed, iron tubes were placed to prevent the houses from collapsing like a house of cards.

Editor Redactie

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