Houses and trees...well, dunes actually.

As some of you may know, I have a bit of a thing about Center Parcs as a model for large-scale sustainable housing development, so I made a quick detour from last week’s stay in Haarlem to visit Center Parcs Zandvoort. Disappointingly, for my ‘houses and trees’ narrative, it is largely tree-less, nestling instead into the dunes just behind the beach, but is still rather appealing...

The first thing you notice is the jaunty, multi-coloured tiled roofs, which on closer inspection turn out to be later additions to the original flat-roofed ‘villas’ familiar to anyone who has visited Center Parcs in the UK. This is presumably a case of making virtue of necessity, with the planned replacement of flat roofs delivering a clever retrofit double-whammy: a strong new look for the site plus what looks like a 30% increase in floor space. The site is noticeably more dense than CP Elveden and is rather hemmed in by the town, so growth by simply adding units (as at Elveden) seems not to have been an option.

The higher density also means CP Zandvoort is compact and walkable compared to CP Elveden where bikes are the favoured means of edge-to-centre ‘commuting’. (How ironic given the relative popularity of cycling in the UK and NL!)

The dominant scale of adjacent development and the rather bracing sea breeze on the day of my visit made the lack of trees the more disappointing, but for woodland you have to head a mile or so further inland where the less windy and salty micro-climate allows a belt of mixed woodland which frames Haarlem’s western flank. As an aside, this layered west-to-east geography of sea/beach/dunes/forest/city/water-meadows makes Haarlem a particularly attractive and rewarding place to explore by bike and boat. Heartily recommended over Amsterdam!

#houses+trees #retrofit #centerparcs #housing #architecture #sustainabledevelopment #haarlem #amsterdam #netherlands #centerparcs