Living and playing in Tic-Tac-Toe

It’s 2027, and as you wander into the new Ravel residential district, you find yourself eye-to-eye with the imaginatively designed pink-coloured Tic-Tac-Toe residential tower. Children playing outside, greenery on the outer walls with birds flying in and out – plenty of reasons to be cheerful. However, it was the interior where the design process began, where mostly young families will be living. ‘Why should parents have the biggest room?’

There are six or seven apartments on each of the eleven floors; they are around 80 square metres on average, with up to five rooms in every apartment, thanks to the flexible floor plans. The Tic-Tac-Toe storeys have a clear structure, with a dwelling in each corner, and between them three apartments that run from façade to façade. As a result, there are views in two directions from every apartment. Moreover, there is an extra space on every second floor that can be rented by any resident as an additional bedroom for visitors, or as a work space.

Children also played a key role in the design of the ground floor, or ‘plinth’. ‘We asked children from the neighbouring Kindercampus Zuidas primary school what building they would like to live in’, explains Landreau. ‘Their ideas are reflected in the design of the ‘plinth’. The ridge of the glass façade rises to a point – exactly as a child draws the roof of a house.’ The dual ground floor behind the façade features a space that is accessible to the public, where people can meet each other. This is an open and child-friendly environment consisting primarily of glass and wood, and with possibilities for a living room, cycle storage, and hospitality businesses, for example.

There is plenty of space for greenery around the balconies, the character of which changes in the design by DS landschapsarchitecten the higher up in the building you go. Landreau: ‘In other words, the greenery on each floor is appropriate to the animals and insects that live at certain heights: flies and butterflies on the lower levels, birds and bats higher up. Spaces have been left open around the balconies for shelter.’

‘There are three apartments on the top floor, with two large glasshouses on the sides. They have sliding doors that can be opened when the weather is good, so that residents can enjoy the sun and the views’, explains Landreau. ‘We sometimes jokingly refer to the building as ‘the Princess of Zuidas’, with its top floor being the crown.’ A playful princess, that is: Tic-Tac-Toe is what the Americans call noughts and crosses.