Living as ordinarily as possible with a visual impairment

At the Bartiméus location in Doorn, people with a multiple disability who also have a visual impairment live. As a replacement for the outdated facilities, IAA Architects was asked to design a new living environment. Due to the nature of the disabilities it was not desirable to include these people in an 'ordinary' residential area. Here they would receive too many stimuli with alienation and isolation as a possible consequence. Bartiméus therefore wanted to create a village that would open up to the outside world, so that a reverse integration could take place.

AN ORDINARY VILLAGE

With the working title 'an ordinary village' we have strung together the three main components of living, working and recreation as a bead chain to form a village. The housing consists of clusters for four, five, six or seven residents, in mostly one storey residential buildings spread over the site.