UNStudio has designed the urban plan for ‘The Smartest Neighbourhood in the World’, currently being developed in Helmond’s Brandevoort District in the Netherlands. Rather than as a pre-determined fixed plan, our urban vision describes a flexible grid that is developed per the users’ demands.
In July 2018 UNStudio was selected to put together a team that would translate the ambitions of Brainport Smart District into a spatial plan. The plan is based on the latest insights and techniques in the areas of circularity, participation of (future) inhabitants, social cohesion and safety, health, data, new transport technologies and independent energy systems. The resulting urban vision was created in a collaboration between UNStudio (project lead and urban planning) and Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners, (ecology and landscape), Metabolic (Circularity and climate adaptation), Habidatum (data analysis) and UNSense (Data and technology strategy).
Over the next ten years the Brainport Smart District will develop approx. 1,500 new homes and 12 hectares of business premises within a ‘living lab’: a mixed residential neighbourhood organised around a central park and surrounded by business spaces and natural reserves. The district aims to develop a new relationship between buildings and landscape, whereby both strengthen each other qualitatively. The landscape is used as a productive environment for food, energy, water, waste processing and biodiversity.
Unlike normal developments however, BSD will not be designed first and built afterwards. Instead, design and construction will go hand in hand through step-by-step development. This new district aims to contribute to the creation of a sustainable and unique living concept, one which embraces ‘learning by doing’.
Stichting Brainport Smart District is a joint venture between Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Universiteit van Tilburg, provincie Noord-Brabant, gemeente Helmond, gemeente Eindhoven en Brainport Development.