Chief urban designer Jurgen Krabbenborg of Urban Planning & Sustainability was closely involved in the alternative building code for residential happiness: “The City of Amsterdam wants to add 150,000 homes to the existing housing stock by 2050. That would be about 7,500 new homes per year. In the building frenzy within municipal policies, there are concerns about the quality, diversity and changeability of apartments in recently built inner-city residential complexes. Many uniform homes have been built there in recent years. If we continue like this, in 30 years we will have a lot of identical, mostly small homes. There are also questions about the social implications of new inner-city construction and regarding the transition from building to city. We have to remain critical in that regard”.

Plenty of reasons for Urban Planning & Sustainability to launch Mooi Mokum, a programme for good living in future Amsterdam - with analysis, design research, reflection and debate. Among other things, this resulted in the alternative building code for residential happiness. Urban Planning & Sustainability co-wrote it with Common Practice, De Zwarte Hond and MVRDV, BETA, Falsework and Platform Woonopgave. Municipality and designers formulated prescriptions in that ‘soft’ building code that contribute to the quality of inner-city blocks. Those prescriptions deal with themes such as bonding, adaptability and robustness, about meeting and privacy, about sustainability, living as a right and the responsibility of the construction chain.

Flora Nycolaas describes the alternative building code as agenda-setting. The chief urban planner of Urban Planning & Sustainability’s Strategy Department is the initiator of Mooi Mokum. She refers to former Department City Development deputy director, Annius Hoornstra: “He was called the ‘tender king’, but at the same time he was also an idealist. He says: ‘Stand up for this! If nobody says this needs to happen, it won’t’”.

Nycolaas says Urban Planning & Sustainability can set preconditions for building envelope and bay width: “These are very decisive for the quality of the floor plan. At Urban Planning & Sustainability, we are currently investigating the significance of the depth and width of a building block for the utilisation of that block. 27 metres of depth seems quite feasible, while 30 metres is too deep; that’s how precise it gets. And don’t let the underground car park dictate the bay width in a building, which often happens now”. Urban Planning & Sustainability can also help guide the footprint: “That determines how a building is accessed - with core, corridor, gallery”.

Jurgen Krabbenborg characterises Mooi Mokum as a quest: “How can we do better than we do now, as an urban planning department? Drawing focus to the quality of the floor plan is quite tricky for Urban Planning & Sustainability. As long as a project team from the municipality is watching projects being built, you move relatively close to the architect. But as a service, you don’t want to intrude on that architect’s territory and start reviewing floor plans”.

The leeway is elsewhere, Krabbenborg says: “In a Mooi Mokum workshop with the architects involved, I asked about preconditions that they believe are currently missing from the municipal building envelopes and plot passports and could contribute to housing quality. Architect Henk Stadens of De Zwarte Hond contributed five bullet points during that workshop. Make galleries wide enough for passing, staying, meeting. Draw three possible home layouts within one floor plan, instead of using that home in just one way. Make sure each home has its own outdoor space. Give a two-room product more uses and pay attention to the façade-to-floor area ratio; avoid creating narrow row houses. These are keys to residential quality that you can include relatively easily in a plot passport”.

Jurriën van Duijkeren and Inara Nevskaya of architecture firm Common Practice also co-wrote the alternative building code. According to them, a good compact urban home provides space for personal development and long-term habitation in the city. Jurriën van Duijkeren: “An ideal future-proof home is modest in size and in its equipment, but at the same time offers plenty of room for adaptations, personal interpretations and a daily experience of beauty”. Those freedoms and specialisations make for a sustainable home that will last you as a resident through the various stages of your life: “That extends the life cycle of the home and building, and enriches the city”.

Inara Nevskaya calls the alternative building code a good start to draw attention to the soft aspects of habitation that ultimately determine residential happiness: “The whole construction chain, from planner to contractor, has a social responsibility and must consider consequences - beyond the minimum legal obligations set by the regular Building Code. In our dream scenario, the advice from the alternative building code is adopted in the frameworks for new developments and included in interim testing during the process from plan to construction. An aesthetic review; not only for the façade appearance, but also for future-proof housing quality!”.