One Dutch architecture firm proves thinking inside the box can pay off - just be sure to build in fresh perspectives

Urban or suburban, up or out, tall or sprawl? This is the simple first question which most North American home buyers must answer. Once they have decided between squeezing into a hi-rise or accepting a soul-crushing commute, they are then faced with another uninspiring choice - between a few standard apartment plans in the city, or standard house plans in the suburbs.

Powered by the roughly concurrent inventions of the elevator and the automobile, our cities have grown up and out so rapidly that there has been little impetus, amongst the general population, to question the status quo. But now that commuting in many cities has reached its natural limits and some hi-rise buildings have only views of other hi-rise buildings, people are beginning to look for alternatives.

In cities such as Tokyo, extreme population density has, for many decades, been a primary concern of architects and developers who work to obtain the maximum utility out of each square centimeter of the city.

The Netherlands, as the most densely populated country in Europe, also has long been addressing the densification of its cities. To meet further demand, the Dutch government began a program in 1995 to effect the construction of 800,000 new homes which are to be built by 2005.

During this bouyant period of construction and design the cities of Amsterdam and nearby Rotterdam have become a sort of Hollywood for architects - attracting talent from around the world.

One Canadian drawn to Holland is Burton Hamfelt, who studied architecture at the University of Toronto and worked for two years at Bruce Mau Design Studio in Toronto before moving to the Netherlands in 1993. After working in the offices of two leading architects in Rotterdam and Antwerp, Belgium, he joined, in 1995, with three other ex-patriate architects to form S333 Studio for Architecture and Urbanism. The global team includes Jonathon Woodroffe and Dominic Papa, originally from England, and Chris Moller from New Zealand.

As the firms' name suggests, they are equally as interested in the development and organization of cities as they are individual pieces of architecture. The young firm have managed to win several competitions in recent years. The winning entry in an international competition is currently being completed in Vijfhuisen, Holland.

The project includes 56 houses aranged in a irregular, 'field-like' manner over 10.5 hectares of land. A central concern of the architects is to subtly mediate between conflicting goals of openess and privacy, in a densely built group of houses. One way these objectives are met is through the simple, but clever use of diagonal views - both within the houses and to the outdoors.

By establishing long diagonal sight lines thoughout the house interiors, the architects instill the sense that the occupant is experiencing and living in the whole house, not just one room. Many views of the outdoors are also diagonal, sometimes extensions of the interior views, which helps limit the visual reminders of the close proximity of neighbours. Where there are large windows for lateral view, care is taken to avoid direct view into a neighbour's window.

Modern aesthetics are accepted in Holland to such a degree that it is somewhat radical not to design colourful, cantilevered boxes with flat roofs. In this context, S333 Studio decided on a very basic building type - almost like a child might draw, or a monopoly house, but with many options for individual customization. "We started with the generic idea of a house, almost a cliche version, just to see how that could form the beginning of a further customization of the houses" Hamfelt explains.

A measure of visual uniformity is maintained as all the houses are clad in a mixture of red cedar grooved siding and ribbed steel. "The form is just a starting point as there is a whole series of types and built-in options like roof terraces, expansions of the ground floor, roof additions and extra windows and so forth" Hamfelt continues. "People have responded to this and we have at the end 56 "different" houses, so you get a natural variation of the building through personal choice".

There is also a variation in economic levels of owners in the development. As mandated by the government, the housing is 30% social housing ($165,000 for 100sq.m), 40% medium priced ($300,000 for 130 sq.m) and 30% expensive (approximately $750,000 for 175 sq.m). "This was also why we chose for a standard type so as to minimize the gap between the well off and not so well off" Hamfelt explains.