Coming home to a scenic residential area where it feels like you’re on holiday all year round

We produced the urban and landscape design for ERA Contour. The foundation of this design was formed by studying various lifestyles and investigating what currently generates living happiness. The results led to an inspiring and innovative living environment. Addressing fun, meaning and virtue is a challenge within the spatial environment. All these ingredients are essentially dependent on human behaviour and the fact that people undertake certain activities of their own accord. The spatial environment can stimulate such activities. Within your private domain, but also the immediate surroundings with your close neighbours and friends and, eventually, within the public space with people you hardly know or do not know at all.

Access to fun, meaning and virtue are stimulated within four spatial domains with transitions in between: the private domain, collective domain, semi-public domain and public domain. In many neighbourhoods and cities, the transitions between private and public are hard, with very little going on in between. There is a lack of attention to transitions and the semi-public and collective domain. The opposite extreme is a campsite or holiday park. There, you will find many more domains located between the private and public domains, space is claimed, and it overlaps more. People at campsites or holiday parks speak to each other more easily, share things and undertake activities together; it’s a place where various domains of happiness are represented and balanced. The parochial and collective domains are also present here. Moreover, the divisions are less hard but instead merge seamlessly. This creates a very different experience of the physical spaces compared to a regular residential area.

Access to fun, meaning and virtue are stimulated within four spatial domains with transitions in between: the private domain, collective domain, semi-public domain and public domain. In many neighbourhoods and cities, the transitions between private and public are hard, with very little going on in between. There is a lack of attention to transitions and the semi-public and collective domain. The opposite extreme is a campsite or holiday park. There, you will find many more domains located between the private and public domains, space is claimed, and it overlaps more. People at campsites or holiday parks speak to each other more easily, share things and undertake activities together; it’s a place where various domains of happiness are represented and balanced. The parochial and collective domains are also present here. Moreover, the divisions are less hard but instead merge seamlessly . This creates a very different experience of the physical spaces compared to a regular residential area.
The challenge when designing a new residential neighbourhood is to, in particular, sculpt the transitions from private (home) to public, thereby creating valuable interaction between the home and outdoor space.

The holiday feeling is reflected in all aspects; the free allotment, the green landscape between the houses, the surrounding forest, outdoor life and the social interaction encouraged by the various meeting places in the plan.
You have your own home but also share a large green park with your neighbourhood where you can engage in all kinds of activities: playing, walking, cycling, tennis, fishing, building huts, relaxing and socialising. Like at the campsite, the design includes a picnic table, space to play soccer and, when the weather is nice, you can barbecue with your neighbours.
Happy Days is a residential area that stimulates a holiday feeling, with a rich layering, and where themes such as ecology, climate proofing, sustainability, socialising and activity have been thought through integrally. A place where cars do not belong. A place where you can escape the city’s hustle and bustle and where it all revolves around being outdoors.