Half glazed, half closed

’De Hood’ is a centre where young people and other residents of the neighbourhood Reimerswaalbuurt can engage in activities under professional supervision and so develop their talents. The target group is active, motivated young people who would benefit from a place of their own outside family and school. A rectangular pavilion measuring 15 by 8.5 metres has been built on a vacant strip of green space. The ground floor level, which is glazed on all sides and contains the entrance foyer, a kitchen, a small office and toilets, immediately catches the eye.

It is topped by a closed, white volume, which rises up like a high forehead between the surrounding trees. This contains an activities space, which is invisible from the outside and can be divided into two smaller spaces by means of a moveable partition. The windowless walls are insulated so as to prevent noise nuisance to the surrounding area. Skylights provide daylighting. Because the lower glazed front, which is composed of five metre long panels and structural glued glass doors, used up a large part of the building budget, the closed superstructure has the cheapest possible finish: a polyurethane spray coating. This combination of a completely transparent ground floor and a completely closed superstructure results from the tricky requirement the designers had to meet: how to build a screened-off domain, where young people can feel at home, on an open plot?