De Zeester, Noordwijk (NL) Day care for mentally handicapped persons

Segregation – Integration

The Willem van den Bergh Foundation, a care institute for persons with mental handicaps in Noordwijk, is facing major changes in the years ahead. The site will be increasingly open to users other than those with mental or any other handicaps. Normalizatio...

De Zeester, Noordwijk (NL) Day care for mentally handicapped persons

Segregation – Integration

The Willem van den Bergh Foundation, a care institute for persons with mental handicaps in Noordwijk, is facing major changes in the years ahead. The site will be increasingly open to users other than those with mental or any other handicaps. Normalization, the principle of reintegrating care receivers into the general social environment, is gaining acceptance. It means a shift in care away from segregation of the mentally handicapped, a practice which is still fairly common. So normal housing will be built alongside specialized care facilities. There is also a trend from institutional towards consumer-oriented architecture. An enthusiastic and inspired client, Durk Kooistra, and a master plan by Felix Claus have created favourable conditions for taking this project further.

Campus and day care

The residential care centre for mentally handicapped persons on the Willem van den Bergh site in Noordwijk has a campus-like layout. It consists of a large, green site containing buildings which are diverse in their architecture, size and function. The site can be considered as divided into two parts: a meadow area with larger buildings, and a wooded area with smaller, architecturally self-contained buildings. The day care facility, which is used by a closed institution, is in the wooded area. The residents are familiar only with these surroundings, and they are mentally and physically vulnerable. The building therefore has a warm, non-institutional ambience, with an emphasis on small-scale situations and interpersonal relations. A question that arises is how do the residents of a psychiatric institution feel about their surroundings.

De Zeester Extravert – Intimate Given the rural context and the requirements, we propose placing a compact, directionless and self-contained building in the woods. The outdoor space is contained within the volume. This makes it unnecessary to place fences around the building and its outdoor space: at most, a see-through curtain might be used to protect the open spaces under the overhangs. The ability to control the outdoor space is important because this is a closed institution. The building opens visually towards the surroundings and the landscape, which is effectively drawn into the building under the overhangs. The building has a simple, centralized organization, so retaining a self- contained character. De Zeester (“The Starfish”) falls in line with the other pavilions in having zoological name.