OFFICE 338

The Loofstraat housing complex is situated on the grounds of a nineteenth-century private estate, until recently hidden behind a former hospital in Kortrijk. The new housing complex occupies the footprint of the now-demolished hospital, and opens the site towards an adjacent English-style garden and a few scattered outbuildings. Two housing typologies negotiate its relation to its surroundings, one aligned with the row houses on the street, the other freestanding in the park. Five large urban villas of varying heights are conceived as rectangular volumes encased in an exposed steel structure, with elevated floors and triangular corner terraces. Their plan is composed around the central core, with each apartment having access to a terrace. The cut corners and sunken ground floor of each volume are clad in different kinds of marble that give the otherwise similar buildings a distinct appearance. The ground floors enclose entrances, bike storage and various communal spaces, including a fitness room, co-working space and meeting rooms. One of the volumes abuts two parallel slabs of smaller maisonettes that form a courtyard in between. This courtyard, with commercial spaces on the ground floor, serves as a central public space of the new neighbourhood. All the buildings in the complex sit on top of a shared underground parking structure. Above this common base, an undulating landscape echoes the nearby historic park, but also organises all the entrances and circulation.