Prison' Housing vs Housing' Prison: A Comparative Analysis of De Koepel and the Oost III Projects by Koolhaas/OMA in the 1980s

This paper provides an overview on how small housing can be studied following an exploratory strategy, through a comparative analysis that brings together architectural theory and practice. !is research stems from the author’s doctoral thesis, Domesticity ‘Behind Bars’, and its subsequent development as a postdoctoral project, ‘Unexpected’ Domesticity. Both studies seek to provide an answer to the following research question: How is it possible to explore the tensions and contradictions of domesticity? To this end, this research studies Non-traditional Forms of Collective Housing, this is, other forms of collective housing for people who live alone, but within a community. Because one of the main challenges in many cities and countries today is the growing demand for non-family households. Two cases designed by one of the most influential architects of the last quarter of the 20th century, Rem Koolhaas and Office for Metropolitan Architecture, are placed in relation to each other, exploring their differences and similarities. In this paper, his proposal for the renovation of a 19th-century panopticon prison is analysed, together with another of his housing projects in which the typological variety shows small units as an alternative to those in-tended for families. For various reasons, both can be considered paradigmatic projects. The first is one of only three pure panoptic prisons built in the Netherlands at the end of the 19th century, known as De Koepel (the dome), specifically the one located in the city of Arnhem, which is a National Monument. !e proposal for the renovation of the entire prison complex was developed over almost a decade, between 1979 and 1988, and culminated in the specific proposal for the design of the interior of the cells. !e second case is the Oost III subplan of the IJ-plein urban plan, located in a former harbour area on the banks of the IJ in Amsterdam North, a plan in which all the housing was social housing, which is unique in the Netherlands and unfeasible today. !e plan was designed and built between 1980 and 1988, and in the housing blocks of the Oost III subplan that Koolhaas/OMA themselves also implemented, the small housing units have a significant presence. Archival work plays an essential role in the methodology of this research, and the documents of both projects are held in the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, at the Nieuwe Institute in Rotterdam. !is research shows that individual small living units often are complemented by options for use that offer more complex ways of living together.