Ipse de Bruggen is one of the largest caregivers in The Netherlands and cares for over 6,000 people with mental disabilities. In 2021, Ipse de Bruggen commissioned Kopvol to design a building ensemble of 6 buildings that will help to reduce the intensity of care for the most severely affected clients (one caregiver per client) and help them to become more independent and less (self-) destructive. A cross-like residential building typology was created, with all interior and exterior spaces visible from its center. Five private rooms per building (five buildings in total) are grouped concentrically around this central area, the open kitchen–living room. Five anterooms with circular wall cut-outs create a gradual, stimulus-reducing transition from group activity to retreat space. A ceiling recess reinforces this spatial experience. The special shape of the single-story brick building delimits four gardens so naturally that stigmatizing fences becomes unnecessary.
07/2023 – 02/2024 the project will be part of the international architecture exhibition “Building to heal. How architecture helps healing” at the Munich Museum of Modern Art: Pinakothek der Moderne