Urban villa, Amsterdam

These days, during the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, more and more architects are talking about the need for a new sobriety, or 'new poverty'. NL Architects' design for an 'urban villa' containing ten dwellings is quite the reverse. This architecture is an exuberant celebration of space, with a wooden 'canyon' entry, floor-to-ceiling picture windows and lofty ceilings below an undulating grass roof out of which patios have been carved. Yet this is certainly not a building that is intent on being eye-catching or original, even though this is ultimately one of the main qualities of the dwellings. The design came about in a highly rational way.

The building is part of a larger scheme for the transformation of Funen, a former industrial site, into a residential area of 500 dwellings. Frits van Dongen of de Architekten Cie made the masterplan for the area in 1998. He also designed an urban wall that blocks the noise of the adjacent railway and defines the area behind it as a park landscape with a loose arrangement of sixteen urban villas (designed by different architects), also known as 'hidden delights'.

The footprints and heights of these blocks were laid down in the masterplan. So when NL Architects were assigned Block K, they knew that it had to be 31 × 28 metres in plan with 2.5 storeys, of which the lower two were to be in alignment and half of the top floor was to be a roof terrace/garden.

The architects interpreted these guidelines fairly literally, designing a block of exactly 2 + 1/2 floors with a sedum roof. Then, taking account of the surrounding (taller) blocks, they set about deforming the 7.5-metre-high block so as to maximize views, space and light. The starting point for the resulting dwellings was that they should all have the same volume (630 m³) and be arranged back to back. All ten dwellings differ spatially and they also vary in surface area from 132 m² to 185 m². They are accessed from an internal street (public) that bisects the block diagonally. The detailing of this space and of the facades and roof corresponds with this image of a bisected block. The front doors merge seamlessly with the vertical timber cladding of the facades, and even the letter boxes have been given a quarter turn so as not to disrupt the vertical line pattern. The required storage spaces and building services are also tucked away in this central zone, leaving the external walls 'free' for a fully glazed treatment: as soon as you enter one of the dwellings, a panorama opens up. One drawback of this design decision is that the view is nothing to write home about – it's not as if you are looking at a real park, but mainly other buildings. In return, NL Architects have provided the neighbours with a park-like roof to look at.

Moreover, with the addition of an undulating grass roof interspersed with patios, the architects have created a private little world for the building's residents. At the top of your house it's possible to imagine that you are not in Amsterdam, but in a fantasy world, a sort of hobbit village. And inside, the extra high ceiling lends an almost church-like quality to some dwellings.

So this urban villa is most definitely a 'hidden delight' – more so than many of the other blocks, which, with their brick facades and balconies, are really quite ordinary. Yet all those other buildings are fully occupied while six of the ten dwellings in Block K are still unsold. Naturally the financial crisis and the price tag (at 620,000 to 810,000 euros these are the most expensive houses in the scheme) play a major role, but price is not the only reason.

It is the very uniqueness of the spaces that is their undoing. Many potential buyers lack the creativity and insight to come up with an appropriate design for such a dwelling. What, for example, to do with the deep, dark room on the ground floor, or with the double-height space on the second floor? And the top floor layout with its outdoor space is seen as a real disadvantage. If you make it your living space you always have to climb two flights of stairs to get to it while your bedrooms are on the much less private lower two floors. What's more, the outdoor space is rather small for this class of dwelling and you can't even walk on the grass roof.

These are chiefly practical drawbacks that ten years ago would not have been seen as obstacles by either the client or the market. For that is how many years have passed since NL Architects presented its first design for Block K and its completion at the end of 2009. Ten years in which so much has changed that you could already call the building a monument to its time, acknowledges architect Kamiel Klaasse. It's a matter of waiting for the right buyers who have the necessary money and daring to take on the challenge of living in this 'monument'.