The planting at ’t Eemgoed has now grown in so vigorously that the homes almost vanish into it. Walk across the village estate in Oosterwold and you see vegetable gardens and planted roofs sooner than buildings. From the first sketch, three cepezed disciplines worked towards the same idea: the landscape leads and the architecture follows. Now that the planting has matured, that idea has fully come into its own.
a village within the landscape
’t Eemgoed has eighty-two homes in eight gently curved longhouses across seven hectares, with the Eemhuis as its community building. The planted roofs let the ground plane run on across the homes, so that the whole site forms a single green structure. At first the building volumes were still clearly visible; with each growing season the roofs have closed over and the longhouses settle into the landscape. Around them lie ten landscape rooms with vegetable gardens, animal pastures and food forest. The site is car-free: parking is at the edge, so that residents move through the greenery rather than across car parks. The estate borders the Eemvallei, fifty hectares of new natural landscape managed by Staatsbosbeheer.
living in the green
Around 130 adults and fifty children live at ’t Eemgoed. The land is owned collectively, and residents manage the greenery and the vegetable gardens together. The homes are energy-neutral and gas-free, built with timber framing and a bio-based share of over 30%, and designed so that their materials can be reused later. At ’t Eemgoed, living in the green is no longer a promise but an everyday setting.
cepezed designed the estate, cepezedprojects developed it and cepezedbouwteam coordinated construction. Because design, development and delivery came together within cepezed, a single line ran from the first sketch to completion, and the residents’ wishes could carry through at every stage
