Going Dutch: Multifamily Housing Design Insights From the Netherlands

Going Dutch
Multifamily Housing Design Insights
from the Netherlands
Arthur Erickson Travel Award Report
By Philippe Fournier

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Special thanks to the Arthur Erickson Foundation for
sponsoring my trip.
Completed in fulfilment of the Arthur Erickson Travel Award
Travel Dates: May 3 - 15, 2023
The Netherlands
© Philippe Roy Fournier, 2023
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2023
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350%
National home prices
300%
250%
200%
150%
disposable income
100%
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Canada house prices vs disposable income growth since 1975.
Canada’s Housing Crisis
Canada is experiencing a severe housing affordability
crisis, reflected both in skyrocketing home prices and
rents relative to incomes in almost all major cities, well
above the ‘affordability’ benchmark used by the Canada
Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) at 30% of
household income going towards housing costs.
There is consensus among experts that this crisis is due
mostly to a chronic shortage of housing supply. Per a 2021
report by Scotiabank, Canada has had both the highest
population growth and lowest per-capita housing stock in
the G7 for years. The CMHC estimates Canada would
need an estimated 22 million housing units by 2030 in
order to restore housing affordability to all Canadians,
but notes we are only on track to have less than 19 million
at current rates -- a shortfall of almost 3.5 million.
As one measure to address the crisis, municipal and
provincial jurisdictions across Canada have begun
reforming longstanding zoning practices in order to
allow denser forms of multifamily housing to be built in
neighbourhoods where they were previously forbidden.
Since the mid-20th century, common practice in most
Canadian cities outside of Quebec has been to zone
most land exclusively for single-family homes. Since
urban land is inherently limited, this practice effectively
caps the housing supply and inflates housing costs as
demand rises.
The ‘Missing Middle’
These reforms have so far heavily focused on permitting
‘missing middle’ styles of housing into these infill
neighbourhoods: defined as the range of multifamily
housing typologies between the extreme scales of high
rise towers and single family houses. These include
multiplexes, townhomes, terraced housing, cottage
courts, and mid-rise apartments. In October 2022,
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Topic of inquiry: ‘Missing Middle’ housing typologies
‘Missing Middle’ Housing
the government of Ontario kicked off this paradigm
shift by announcing it would allow up to three units
of housing as-of-right on all residential land in the
province, overriding local and city bylaws. The city
of Toronto quickly followed up with a bill to legalize
four-unit multiplexes everywhere. The government of
British Columbia has announced its intentions to go
even further, allowing up to eight units on much of the
land in its major cities and even higher densities around
transit stops.
These ongoing developments present a major opporunity
for architects to shape the quality and standards of
multifamily homes as they become the ‘new normal’
in major urban centres. However, as the term ‘missing
middle’ implies, there is a general lack of extent quality
precedents for designers to refer to in most postwar North
America. Since the end of World War 2, urban planning
policies and mass production techniques enabled the
mass suburbanization of the continent, with single family
houses becoming an accessible option for the growing
middle classes. Canada developed in lockstep with its
neighbor to the south, and the detached house came to
symbolize the ‘Canadian Dream’ of personal success,
while denser multifamily housing typologies – relegated
by planning policies to a minority of urban land – became
associated with an implicit failure to live up to that dream.
To this day, detached single family houses are home to
a solid 52.8% of Canadian households, while ‘missing
middle’ buildings are home to approximately 35.3%.
However, much of this missing middle stock is in
Quebec, which for cultural reasons has always been
more comfortable with multifamily housing than English
Canada, and where housing remains significantly less
costly.
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The Netherlands & Canada
Canada’s Households by Residence Type
In the face of this changing regulatory environment, I
wanted to visit the Netherlands because it has a particular
rich stock of ‘missing middle’ & multiplex housing,
along with ample examples for Canadian architects to
draw lessons from. EU data shows that up to 57.5%
of the Dutch population live in the category of “semidetached”
or attached terrace homes, 20.5% live in flats,
and only 17.3% live in fully detached houses. This is in
sharp contrast to Canada’s housing stock.
The Netherlands offers another interesting contrast to
Canada due to its low-lying geography and scarcity of
land, which impose unique constraints on its urban
development. Much of the country’s land had to be
dredged out of the sea before it was ever settled, and to
this day, new developments must always be carefully
engineered with flood control and efficiency in mind.
Thus out of sheer necessity, urban planning is given a
level of attention and urgency in the Netherlands not
found in many other places.
I believe that the country’s reputation for excellent urban
design originates from this circumstance. Necessity is
the mother of invention, and a deep appreciation for the
value of land as a scarce resource is built into the Dutch
way of life. Another way this manifests is in the country’s
incredible status as the world’s second largest exporter
for agricultural products, aided by a technologically
innovative farming industry. Canada is about as close
to the opposite as can be; we have so much land that we
have long afforded to misuse it, contributing to many
of the urban and environmental problems we are now
grappling with.
Correspondingly, The Netherlands is a much more
densely populated country than Canada, at approximately
521 people / km 2 of land compared to 4 people / km 2 ,
respectively. When comparing at the level of cities, the
disparity closes, but can still vary widely depending on
methodology due to arbitrary jurisdictional boundaries.
One report by The Fraser Institute found Amsterdam was
Single detached: 52.8%
Missing Middle: 35.3%
Semi detached: 5.0%
Row house: 6.5%
Duplex flat:
Flat in <5 Sty. building: 18.3%
Flat in >5 Sty. buildings: 10.7%
Other: 1.5%
Dutch Households by Residence Type
Single detached: 17.3%
Missing Middle: 57.5%
Flat: 20.5%*
Other: 1.5%
Semi detached / Terrace: 57.5%
*Does not distinguish by building
height; most are in middle sized / lowheight
apartment buildings.
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more densely populated than Toronto, at 4,916 people
per square kilometre compared to 4,457 in the latter. All
major Canadian cities in the study except Vancouver
ranked even lower. This is significant when considering
that Toronto has far more high-rise residential buildings
than Amsterdam, as well as far more land overall. It also
demonstrates that height does not necessarily equate to
density.
Recognizing the difficulties of comparing densities with
different legal boundaries, another study by Demographia
compares global urban densities by the “built up land
area”, defined as “a continuously built up land mass
of urban development that is within a labor market
(metropolitan area or metropolitan region)...best thought
of as the ‘urban footprint’ --- the lighted area...that can be
observed from an airplane (or satellite) on a clear night.”
Under this methodology, several legally distinct cities
in both countries are considered one contiguous urban
area. For example, Rotterdam includes The Hague. I
believe this methodology more closely approximate the
“lived experience” of urban density, since interregional
travel is frequent. The chart below compares selected
urban regions with their findings:
Amsterdam
Rotterdam - Hague
Toronto
Utrecht
Montreal
Vancouver
3,565 people / km 2
2,981 people / km 2
2,917 people / km 2
2,894 people / km 2
2,725 people / km 2
2,711 people / km 2
It should be noted from the outset that despite its
significant density relative to Canadian cities, The
Netherlands is also experiencing a severe housing
shortage and affordability crisis. Recent research
suggests the Netherlands is about 400,000 homes short
of its current needs. This underscores that good design is
not sufficient in isolation to address housing affordability
crises, and the Netherlands may even need to densify
more than its current housing base in some places to
sufficiently expand its housing supply.
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Another reason I wanted to study The Netherlands’s
multifamily housing stock was a more academic interest
in this architectural niche. Montreal-based architectural
historians David B Hanna & Francois Dufaux have
noted that this range of housing styles have gone largely
ignored in architectural discourse:
“Where the discipline of architectural history has
had difficulty, is in dealing with the rest of the built
environment, typically 90% or more of the built record.
While middle-class housing, particularly single-family
detached, has had some success in benefiting from the
trickle down of theoretical concepts, particularly stylistic,
the field of urban vernacular housing has gone largely
unnoticed or considered to be not worthy of treatment…
…How does such a systematic blind spot arise? Perhaps
the obsession with single-family housing in twentiethcentury
North America has conditioned researchers
to ignore other forms of housing, excepting, of course,
apartment buildings because of their sheer bulk and
the fact that they tend to be architect designed. Perhaps
also superposed flats are seen superficially as merely
single-family type houses which have been divided into
two or three flats, ignoring the fact that they are a house
type of their own. Clearly what has been missed are
the deep cultural and historical roots of such housing
and their powerful significance in terms of generating
eminently habitable low-cost housing in dense yet
human-scaled neighbourhoods.”
--Montreal: A Rich Tradition in Medium Density
Housing
Hanna and Dufaux note that the vast majority of the extent
urban housing stock was not designed by professionally
trained architects. Cities developed incrementally and
bottom-up by small developers and handymen employing
local materials, know-how and improvisation. Yet out of
this incremental patchwork of trial-and-error eventually
came a corpus of heuristics that get passed through the
vernacular building culture: “rules of thumb” about
how to build housing efficiently with limited means
and sophistication. Canadian architect Brian MacKay
Lyons made this observation: ”vernacular is what you
do when you can’t afford to get it wrong.”
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In the context of housing affordability, I see particular
value in revisiting quality historic examples of these
private “urban vernacular” multifamily housing types.
By focusing not just on radical bespoke projects, but
rather on typologies that were mass replicated, we can
gain insights on how to improve the standards of mass
housing. “Dense yet human scaled” is a balancing act
that traditional Dutch urbanism does very well.
Overview
My trip took place from May 3 - 15, 2023. I spent roughly
half of the trip in Amsterdam, half in Rotterdam, with
a few short stops to Utrecht, Delft, The Hague and
Almere. The country is very small and well connected
by rail, making connections between even small towns
extremely convenient. Within cities, I was able to cover
a lot of ground with rental bikes and public transit.
My objective while travelling was to chronicle and
understand the housing stock from the perspective of
both an architect and layman resident, with an eye to
significant contrasts from Canadian building practices.
I made an effort to travel to very diverse and ‘off-thebeaten
path’ neighborhoods, to experience and compare a
wide cross section of housing types as well as the urban
fabric they were situated in. I particularly wanted to pay
close attention to details at the architectural scale that
impact the quality and comfort of residents.
One of the first and most significant observations I made
is that attached housing is the norm in the Netherlands,
not the exception like it is in Canada. Even in brand
new suburban developments (like Zesteinhoven on the
outskirts of Rotterdam, seen above) rows of townhomes,
semi-detached terrace homes or low-rise apartment
blocks are the dominant residential typologies. Fully
detached single-family houses are rare and generally
found only in very affluent pockets; and even these homes
tend to occupy smaller plots of land than their North
American counterparts. Private gardens and yards may
be provided at the rear of the home, but front lawns are
almost non-existent. Most homes open directly onto the
abutting sidewalk or street.
Attached housing has many advantages over detached
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homes. Environmentally, they consume less land and
are more conducive to creating walkable compact
neighborhoods that obviate the need for personal
motor vehicles. The sharing of party walls reduces the
amount of exterior envelope that heat and energy can
leak through, reducing energy costs.
The ubiquity of attached buildings creates an urban form
of contiguous street walls, with ample ‘eyes on the street’
that discourage criminality. It also satisfies an innate
biological impulse that humans and other animals exhibit
called thigmotaxis, a preference to be near the edges of
things rather than exposed open spaces. Public streets
and plazas lined with hard street wall conditions feel
more like ‘urban rooms.’
The quality of the public realm in the Netherlands
is truly extraordinary. Ample space is given over to
pedestrians and cyclists rather than motor vehicles,
and traffic speeds are kept low on most major roads.
Aside from significantly reducing noise pollution and
increasing safety, it makes the street very pleasant to be
in. Because so many flats are accessible directly from
grade via direct door or walkup, without even requiring
an elevator or some other interior transition area, the
streets very much become an extension of the interior life
of the house, promoting sociability and neighbourhood
interaction. This sometimes manifests in creative ad
hoc interventions on the streetscape. One example is an
on-street parking space being enclosed and filled in with
dirt to become a planter for gardening, seen below right.
North Americans are often resistant to densification
efforts out of fear that it would erode their standard
of living. Canadians have the third largest homes on
earth, averaging 1948 ft 2 , while Dutch homes are about
two-thirds smaller at 1261 ft 2 , with even smaller units
in the big cities. Denser housing necessarily entails the
sacrifice of personal living space; however, this can trade
for potentially better location with desirable amenities or
other pleasantries exterior to the home itself. Ensuring a
high quality public realm makes this tradeoff even more
salutary, and can contribute to a residents’ higher sense
of satisfaction with their home as much as the physical
attributes and size of the home itself.
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Serendipitous relationships between the street and home
life become less likely to occur as housing gets taller.
Research has shown that life in high rise towers tends to
make people more likely to feel isolated, anxious and less
sociable with their neighbours. The interior transition and
circulation spaces required in taller buildings function
as a significant buffer between the private life of the flat
and the public realm.
Across the country, I observed that there is a very high
baseline consistency of neighborhood quality. While
there are certainly poorer and wealthier areas, it was
not always immediately obvious when I had crossed
into either just by looking at the built environment.
Even remoter neighborhoods have high quality local
infrastructure, like fully grade separated bike paths, wide
sidewalks, modal filtering for traffic, parks, playgrounds,
contiguous street walls and proximity to frequent transit.
It was also rarely obvious when a building I was looking
at was public housing; they blend into the fabric of the
city, are well-designed and well-maintained.
This has significant implications for equity. Due to
the legacy of exclusionary zoning and car-oriented
development in Canada, the most walkable and connected
neighborhoods tend to have the most expensive housing.
It is frequently that poorer citizens must seek housing
in more remote locations where necessary amenities
(like grocery stores) are scarce, or where it is very
inconvenient or dangerous to move around without a
car. Those who can’t afford to own or store their own cars
will depend on unreliable transit options or the charity of
others. This reduced mobility can negatively impact their
independence, job & business opportunities, free time,
physical and mental health and social integration. The
Netherlands shows that the tradeoff between affordability
and good location can be at least partly overcome with
proper neighborhood planning, and give poorer residents
more housing options by equalizing the distribution of
crucial infrastructure and resources that all people need.
A common sight on many residential buildings is a
beam with a hook and pulley projecting from the top
gable (left). These were traditionally used for hoisting
large objects in and out of the upper floors through the
windows. Nowadays, mechanical lifts can also be rented
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to provide the same function. Accordingly, the windows
themselves are designed to be swung on multiple axes,
and easily unhinged, removed and repositioned when
complete. These methods show an opportunity to move
items throughout a building without needing built-in
elevators, which add significant cost to projects.
Materially, brick masonry is the overwhelmingly
dominant facade material in the Netherlands, with
concrete as the dominant material for structures and
party walls between attached buildings. Being fireproof
and soundproof, concrete reduces the two most common
discomforts of dense living: fire hazard and noise
pollution between units. Some of the most impressive
Dutch architecture, including the social housing
designed by the Amsterdam School, articulate brick
very creatively, such as with undulating facades and
coursework patterns. I was impressed by the diversity
of expression for such a simple and economical product.
As for interior materiality, exposed masonry and plaster
walls are far more common than the Canadian standard
of gypsum wall board.
Because of the country’s marshy land, up to a million
homes in the Netherlands rest on wooden foundation
piles. Depleted groundwater is leading to unstable and
rotting foundations in many places, and it is common in
old neighborhoods to see buildings that lean on extreme
angles over the sidewalk.
There is far less parking for private residences in the
Netherlands than Canada, especially in inner cities.
Canadian zoning laws frequently impose mandatory
parking minimums on housing projects, leading to an
over-building of parking lots and inflation of housing
prices due to the added construction costs. Parking in
the Netherlands is mostly kept to on-street parking and
underground garages. Personal driveways are found
in more suburban areas, but they are smaller, as are
European cars. Within the city, personal garages can
sometimes be found on the ground floor of terraced units
(shown left), but they are rare and found in relatively
new affluent developments..
By contrast, bike parking is abundant throughout the
country, both on and off-street. Bikes take up significantly
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less space than vehicles both to drive and store, and do
not require designated level parking areas since they can
be securely fastened to almost anything. I would often
look at a large cluster of bicycles on residential streets
and then image how much built up space would need
to be demolished if every owner used a car for most for
their trips instead.
The significance of Dutch cycling culture on the quality
of both the public realm and housing architecture cannot
be understated. The cumulative urban space saved by
obviating the need for through-traffic and parking from
project to project has a compounding effect at the urban
scale, reducing the distances for trips and commutes while
increasing net living space at reduced prices. Significant
compromises are routinely imposed on North American
housing due to the need to accommodate vehicles, which
have also grown in scale since the 1980s due to the
growth of SUVs. Bicycles are much cheaper to own
and maintain than cars, making them more accessible
to lower income populations. They can also easily be
stored inside units without requiring separate garage
structures. Stairs can be fitted with rails to make it easier
for bikes to roll up. Cargo bikes with fitted carriages for
moving objects are seen all over the country.
Residents handle garbage by self-sorting it and then
bringing it to local neighbourhood bins with colorcoordinated
underground storage tanks. On trash day,
specialized trucks will remove the tank, take its contents
and then place it back in the ground. Centralizing
garbage storage this way helps reduce the amount of
stops taken by collectors.
For this trip, I identified two representative types of
missing middle multifamily housing for more in depth
analysis: ‘terraced housing’ and ‘point access blocks.’
I chose these both because they are so common in the
Netherlands and because they approximate the scale
of housing styles I focused on for my thesis project:
multifamily residential buildings of up to 3-5 stories.
These place them within the range of typologies pending
legalization in ongoing Canadian zoning reforms. They
are also inherently economical, modular forms, lending
themselves to the potential for mass production and
prefabrication techniques.
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Terraced Housing
By far the most common housing type in the Netherlands
is terraced housing. These are multistorey attached
homes, often divided into multiple units, accessible
at grade by walk-up steps or doors directly from the
sidewalk. There are roughly two categories of terraced
homes: rijhuis (rowhouse) and herenhuis (townhouse,
also translated as ‘mansion’). Generally the distinction
is in the proportions: townhouses are tall and skinny,
while rowhouses are more squat.
The typical Dutch urban lot is 6m wide, and most
terraced homes that take up the full width of their lot.
Townhomes are often even skinnier in some older areas
like central Amsterdam, partly a product of historic taxes
on building width. Other historic policies, such as a
window tax in the Napeoloenic era, impacted the size and
placement of windows, with bigger windows becoming a
status symbol. The facades are articulated to be visually
unique with different brick styles, fenestration, paint,
door and stoop placement and especially stepped gables
at the roof. If the building has multiple flats, they may
be separately owned as condominiums or rented out as
separate apartments by the building owner. Though they
are formally very similar and form a contiguous street
wall, they are discrete buildings with discrete ownership.
This development pattern of one-off distinct buildings
lots allows for flexibility in the housing market. If
housing demand increases, the building interiors can
be renovated to add more units. Indeed, many of the
famous “canal houses” of inner Amsterdam were
began as single family homes for wealthy Dutch elites.
Conversely if demand falls, units can be merged and
partitions removed, without the essential outer shell and
structure of the building changing significantly. This
building type is inherently adaptable. Furthermore, small
discrete buildings are much easier to tear down and
replace at the end of their (shorter) lifespans than large
buildings, allowing for more frequent turnover, material
recycling and market liquidity.
Despite the very standardized typological template, there
is an enormous stylistic diversity for terraced housing
across the Netherlands. Historic traditional terraced
3
2
1
5
4
Elevations
Unit Compositions
Above: A diagramattic example of a streetscape of
terraced homes shows their flexibility. Superficially
similar buildings on narrow lots can have very
different internal layouts and accomodate signifcant
densities. Assuming a standard footprint of 6m x
16.5m, this example houses 12 households (1881 m 2
Gross Floor Area) on 396 m 2 of land, for a Floor Area
ratio of 4.75.
9
8
7
6
12
11
10
14

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homes in areas like central Amsterdam were developed
piecemeal, and so are highly individuated from property
to property with ornament and architectural expression.
New developments of terraced homes tend to be planned
in bulk as cohesive blocks with more visual consistency,
modernist aesthetic sensibilities and spare use of
ornament. However, these too are often individuated
with masonry treatment, colour, window placement
and other gestures, as seen in the examples in a new
development in Delft, below.
One of the most common and charming ways historic
townhomes articulate themselves is the number and
placement of exterior stairs, stoops and doors. Sometimes
doors to ground floor units or basements are provided in
the stoop itself. For a country famous for its flood risks
and rainy weather, split levels and basements suites are
surprisingly common, especially in historic Amsterdam,
often requiring extremely steep steps from the sidewalk
to be accessed (see right). Sometimes these are covered
by trap doors or large barn doors.
The amount of address numbers on the exterior walls
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and doors provide a clue to the number and size of the
units inside the townhome. Addresses with a lettered
suffix indicate that there are multiple units accessed
from the same exterior door, which typically opens
to an interior common stair used by upper floor units.
Family sized units (2> bedrooms) may span two storeys,
with an interior stair in between -- usually open-tread
or radial to conserve floor area. For units split between
the basement and ground level, it is common to see the
open tread stair provided near the front windows, leaving
a double height space to maximize the natural lighting
between the two storeys. This also helps enable buoyancy
ventilation between the lower level and higher windows.
Most units span the full depth of the floor, maximizing
natural cross ventilation and lighting on the front and
back, reducing lighting and cooling loads. For this reason
it is also typical for the floor hosting kitchen, dining and
living areas to be an ‘open concept’ floor plan. If I looked
through windows from the street, I can usually see the
rear windows and yard. Private rooms like bedrooms
are typically loaded at the rear, on storeys out of eye
level to passerby.
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Clerestoreys
Catwalks around void
provide double height
skylighting below
Terraces from bedrooms
Rear yard grade is a
half-storey lower than
at sidewalk
Unit 1 (2x bed)
Unit 2 (2x bed)
Sidewalk
Door to Unit 1
Utility Rm
Door to Unit 3
Door to Unit 2
Unit 3 (3x bed)
Circulation
In Rotterdam, I was able to stay at the home of my work
colleagues, drawn above and right. The home is in a
classic 6m wide, four storey historic vernacular herenhuis
initially built in 1901, located near Rotterdam Centraal
station just outside of the area bombed in World War 2.
Being able to stay there gave me a perfect opportunity to
see what these homes were like as actually experienced
by a resident.
The building is actually a triplex, with my 3-bedroom
unit occupying the top two floors. The first striking
thing is how well maintained the property has been kept,
despite its age – these homes were built to last. One of
two front doors at grade opens to a steep staircase, with
a landing shared by the doors to my unit and the secondfloor
neighbour. My door then opens to another steep
staircase which winds at the top into a bright, doublestorey
atrium space between the kitchen at the rear and
living room in the front.
I was instantly impressed at how light and spacious this
floor felt despite being only 6m wide. Large windows
on the front and rear facades light the front and back of
the home, while skylights above the atrium funnel light
into the centre. On the top floor, bedrooms are provided
at the rear and front, separated by a catwalk around the
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4th Floor
Unit 3:
(x3 bedroom)
Bed
W/D
WC
DN
Open
Bed
Bed
Pwdr
3rd Floor
Unit 3:
(x3 bedroom)
Living
UP
DN
Kitchen /
Dining
Balcony
2nd Floor
Unit 2:
(x2 bed)
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
DN
UP
WC
Bed
Bed
Balcony
1st Floor
Unit 1:
(x2 bed)
SIDEWALK
Open
UP
UP
DN
Pwdr
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
Deck
Semi-
Basement
Unit 1:
(x2 bed)
Utility
UP
Hall / Living
WC
Bed
Bed
REAR YARD
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perimeter of a void in the floor which brings light below.
Since the units span the full floor plate, cross ventilation
is possible. The unit also has a balcony off the dining
room and a short roof terrace on the top floor.
This representative Dutch townhome would not be legal
to build in Canada, for at least two reasons related to the
access staircase. First is that Canada’s national building
code requires that multi-unit residential buildings above
two stories must provide a second means of egress from
all units in case of fires – the strictest in the developed
world. By comparison, building regulations in the
Netherlands for single-egress buildings up to five stories,
or a finished floor level 12.5m. This seems to be allowed
here because the entry to the top unit falls on the second
storey landing.
Second is that the steps of the stairs themselves are much
steeper and shallower than Canadian building codes
allow. Stairs providing egress must also be rectangular,
while the top unit interior stairs between floors 2 and 3
have tight winders at the top (below, right). Radial winder
steps are very common in Dutch homes because they
take up significantly less floor area, but are also more
dangerous to walk. Users must walk towards the outer
edge of the treads, which narrow towards the wall they
rotate around.
All of this reliance on steep stairs to achieve density
poses obvious problems for people with disabilities and
other accessibility issues, who must seek units level at
grade, closer to the ground, or in much larger buildings
which provide elevators. North American building codes
generally require elevators in residential buildings as
low as three to four storeys for accessibility reasons;
however, the significant costs make them less economical
to provide the shorter the building is, where cost is
split across fewer units. Along with the second egress
requirement, this is a significant source of the ‘missing
middle’ phenomenon in Canada.
Images, Counterclockwise from top left:
1. Common stairwell from street.
2. Interior stairwell in top unit, from common stair
3. Second interior stair within top unit, spanning the third and
fourth storey.
4. View from atrium room into front living room.
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The top floor unit I stayed in is a 1940 ft 2 3-bedroom,
spacious enough to accommodate more beds if renovated.
This places it on the very large end of the spectrum for
Dutch homes, which average 1261 ft 2 , though it also
makes it almost identical to the average home size of
Canada, which is 1948 ft 2 . Unit 2 is a 2-bedroom, 1048
ft 2 unit that spans the full second storey of the building,
with the living and cooking area occupying the front
room and bedrooms at the rear. Unit 1 is a two storey,
2174 ft 2 2-bedroom unit that spans the first finished floor
(a few feet above grade) and the basement. An open riser
staircase connects the two levels via a double height
space in front of the street level windows. The owner of
this unit has full rights to the rear yard, which can be
accessed off a deck from the first floor.
This constitutes a family-sized home, yet takes up
significantly less land than a comparable fully detached
house would in Canada. It is also on a very valuable
location, just footsteps away from Rotterdam’s main
train station. One of the reasons many Canadians
express preference for single family houses in suburban
contexts is because they make up the overwhelming
share of family-sized options on the market. Enabling
the reintroduction of missing middle alternatives would
improve the viability of more family sized units in more
areas. This one building shows the diversity of potential
mutlifamily configurations in the same basic footprint.
Dutch bedrooms tend to be much smaller and narrower
than standard practice in new Canadian projects,
sometimes even less than two metres wide (enough
room for a twin bed or bunk bed, so appropriate for
children). They also typically do not provide built-in or
walk-in closets; instead residents are expected to provide
their own vanities or wardrobes for storage. Bed frames
with millwork drawers are common. Similar to North
American norms, Dutch flats with multiple bedrooms
will have at least one ‘primary’ bedroom that is larger
than the others. Narrow bedrooms can also double as
home offices, workspaces, utility rooms or storage.
21

Point Access Blocks
The second main typology of missing middle housing
that I investigated are what Seattle-based architect
Michael Eliason defines as “Point Access Blocks:”
These are residential buildings where groups of units
are arranged vertically around a single common stair.
These grouping can then be repeated along the length
of the building to form a visually consistent mass along
an entire city block. These are visually distinct from a
street wall of attached rowhouses because the facade
is articulated with a regular window and door pattern,
appearing as one large building rather than similar but
discrete buildings on discrete parcels of land. In the
Netherlands these point access blocks are mostly 4-5
storeys tall.
Significantly, these buildings are ground oriented and
have little or no interior corridors, lobbies or elevators.
Most units can be accessed by walking from grade, either
from direct doors onto the sidewalk, from an exterior
common stoop inset from the front facade in an alcove,
from an exterior catwalk on the rear of the building, or
from landings on an enclosed common stairwell that is
enclosed but articulated into the front facade.
Block with Stoop Unit Access
In most of North America, building codes effectively
forbid this circulation layout. For example, in addition to
the second egress requirement for three storey buildings,
the Canadian building code requires that the two required
exits have a minimum travel distance from each other. In
most cases this requires all units to open onto ‘doubleloaded’
interior corridor with a fire escape on both ends,
which in turn makes it nearly impossible to design units
with two parallel exterior walls. This limits opportunities
for natural cross-breezes and sun lighting to regulate the
interior climate, and reduces the net leasable area of the
building. More floor area is given over to unoccupied,
artificially lit circulation spaces, which also must be
mechanically climate controlled at cost to the owner.
Halfway lengthwise between two ‘point access’ stairs
will be a structural wall vertically spanning the full
height of the building, which doubles as the party wall
between units on each side. The width of these structural
Block with Enclosed Stairwell to Units
* Red indicates unit doors.
22

23


REAR
REAR
REAR
REAR
Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3 Unit 4
UP
DN
UP
DN
FRONT
FRONT
FRONT
FRONT
Typical Floor Plan Template - Access Point Block
Bed
Bed
Bed
WC
Cl.
Cl.
WC
Bed
Bed
Bed
Bed
Bed
Bed
WC
Cl.
Cl.
WC
Bed
Bed
Bed
W/D
W/D
W/D
W/D
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
UP
DN
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
UP
DN
Living /
Kitchen /
Dining
3-bedroom unit layouts: Common rooms along width
Bed
Bed
WC
WC
Bed
Bed
Bed
Bed
WC
WC
Bed
Bed
Cl. Cl.
Cl. Cl.
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
Kitchen
W/D
UP
DN
W/D
W/D
UP
DN
W/D
Living /
Dining
Bed
Living /
Dining
Living /
Dining
Bed
Bed
Living /
Dining
3-bedroom unit layouts: Common rooms along depth
Circulation
The diagrams above show the general layout of a standard point
access block with 9.57m wide structural bays, and two potential
unit layouts that would accomodate family sized three-bedroom
units, assuming the same window placements. Exterior mounted
balconies are frequently provided at the rear of the site.
24


bays will vary from project to project, but provides the
organizing logic within which units can be configured in
many different ways. For blocks with enclosed stairwells
running the full building height, usually two units can
be provided per floor per stairwell. A demising wall
between the units will be provided along the midpoint
of the width of the stairwell, extending from the stair
to the rear wall.
When an inset stoop is provided as the means of vertical
egress, the stairs will usually reach the second level,
running lengthwise deep enough into the building that
the alcove becomes dark. Usually the facade is articulated
with glazing or voids running the height of the space to
allow more light to penetrate.
The point access block circulation arrangement allows
for much more diverse unit layouts than double loaded
corridors. Units can span the full floor plate form front
to rear, enabling cross breezes and deep natural light
penetration. Unlike units in North America that open
onto single loaded corridors, there are always at least
two exterior walls for bedrooms to abut, rather than one.
Common areas (kitchen, living, dining) can be provided
as one open concept space lengthwise along one side
of the building, or depth-wise through it. Mechanical
ductwork, plumbing and electrical layouts can become
much more efficient.
These block style buildings usually enclose the perimeter
of a full city block, creating private courtyard conditions
in the rear as seen below, bottom. These courtyards
may be common space for all residents of the block, but
usually are parceled to provide outdoor yard and garden
space for ground floor units. This example at the bottom
of this page shows a mix of both approaches, with a
playground for children and ping pong tables as well as
fenced private terraces.
Point access blocks may not always have elevators to the
upper floors units, making them less accessible to people
with disabilities and the elderly. However, accessible
grade level units can be provided with direct doors
from the sidewalk. The potential for a wide mix of unit
compositions allows for a mixing of demographics as
well. This gives home seekers a wider variety of suitable
options across wide areas of the city, rather than forcing
them to cluster in specific neighborhoods where zoning
permits a diversity of type like in North American cities.
25

Rotterdam and Amsterdam are urbanistically and
architecturally very different cities. Partly this is because
Amsterdam is the older centre of Dutch wealth, but also
because Rotterdam’s core was heavily bombed in World
War 2, leaving a blank canvas for redevelopment. As
was the spirit of the time, much of this redevelopment
was oriented to accommodate cars and traffic flow, and
while advancements have been made to reclaim some
of the streetscape for people, the increased presence of
cars and wider right-of-ways for them makes Rotterdam’s
public realm noticeably louder and less pleasant than
central Amsterdam. Compared to Canada however, it
is still an extremely accessible, compact and walkable
city. There are fully separated cycle paths on most major
streets, extensive tram connections, and a very dense
multifamily housing stock. This makes it a more useful
analogue for Canadians to study how to successfully
pedestrianize postwar car-oriented urbanism.
Amsterdam’s building stock is more traditional,
historic and ornamented, whereas Rotterdam embraces
modernism, sharp edges & eccentricity. This manifests
in the housing stock as well, as there are far more highrise
and block style housing developments in central
Rotterdam, while Amsterdam’s core is characterized by
its density of highly individuated, low-rise and humanscale
townhomes providing more visual stimuli for
passerby. The stripping of articulation in the facades
and massive, wall-like massing makes the public realm
of central Rotterdam feel colder than central Amsterdam.
This underlines how the scale of buildings has a dramatic
psychological effect on our perception of comfort.
Uninterrupted masses feel oppressive and overbearing.
Building narrow and low, rather than wide and tall, is
an alternative way to achieve density.
Mixed use developments are the norm in the Netherlands
and seem to be permitted on most urban streets, not
just major arterial roads as is common zoning practice
in Canada. For both block style and townhome style
multifamily homes, commercial space can be provided
at grade level with residences on the upper floors.
26


Final Conclusions:
The Role of Architects
Architects unfortunately have a limited role in general
housing affordability, which is determined by a large
variety of factors outside of our control. We seldom
get to choose our own projects, let alone their sites,
programs, construction budgets or the laws that govern
them. But we do play one incredibly important role in
the homebuilding process: shaping the perception of
spaces within these constraints. We influence the flow of
circulation; the progression of spaces; the dimensions of
spaces; the heights of the ceilings; the look and feeling of
the materials; the color of the paints; visibility and light;
the transmission of sound; the flow and temperature of
air; the concentration of sunlight, etc. These experiential
details can be overlooked in architectural discourse in
favor of grand aesthetic and formal gestures, but they are
of enormous importance to the occupants of residential
buildings. They constitute the metrics that people use to
gauge satisfaction with their living situation, and thus
the most essential considerations when designing mass
housing economically.
Such details become even more important in the case of
denser multifamily buildings now demanded in Canadian
cities. As Hanna and Dufaux noted, their perceived
inferior status in North American culture coincided with
a lack of critical attention from architects. This results in
many buildings that are extremely unpleasant to live in
or degrade rapidly, which reinforces thes stigma against
them from the broader public. Designers have a crucial
role in intervening to find the right balance between
comfort and economy.
Since people spend an inordinate amount of their lives
in their homes and attach them with sentimental value,
they choose them with immaculate attention to detail.
Will I hear my neighbors through the walls? How easy
to clean is the flooring? Is there enough room for my
future children? Can I watch them play in the living room
while I cook in the kitchen? Can I get a cross breeze in the
summer? Will I keep in heat in the winter? Will the roof
leak when it rains? More than anything, architects are
in the business of curating everyday human experience.
27

As Canada and other jurisdictions begin to reintroduce
multifamily living to infill urban contexts, architects
will play a major role in alleviating the stigma against
them. We can incrementally build a body of precedents
that demonstrate dense housing can be just as liveable
as the detached house idealized by the Canadian Dream.
In order to achieve this, the most important metric we
can measure projects by is the satisfaction and comfort
of residents.
Common complaints against multifamily buildings
in North America in favor of detached single-family
housing are a lack of privacy, lack of outdoor space, poor
soundproofing between units and inconsistent interior
climate control. While access to private yard space may
be dictated by urban land values, the other complaints
are relatively simple to address architecturally. There is
no shortage of ways to acoustically insulate walls and
doors between units. Balconies and terraces can provide
private exterior space while windows and skylights can
provide natural lighting and ventilation. Furthermore, the
more convenient and pleasant the location, the less likely
people are to begrudge forgoing private pleasantries like
a yard. This makes quality of housing closely linked to
the quality of the public realm outside the door.
My observations also make clear that the regulations
architects work with, from building codes to zoning
laws, significantly restrict their ability to improve
occupant comfort. As noted, most of the building stock
28

I analyzed here in the Netherlands would be illegal or
cost-prohibitive to build in Canada for one reason or
another. Therefore, another important role for architects
is using their professional status to push for reform of
regulations that degrade the quality and feasibility
multifamily developments. A major push for allowing
higher single-egress buildings is underway in Canada
and the US, and jurisdictions like British Columbia
have announced intentions to consult on this change.
Based on my experience on the Netherlands, I believe
further reforms in Canada to the following regulatory
parameters would have particularly broad and major
implications for urban housing quality and affordability:
• Zoning laws on lot coverage, lot sizes, parking
requirements, setback requirements, density limits,
roof lines, podium heights, and mixing of uses
• Codes on egress, stair size and shape
• Elevator requirements: re-assessing needs and
compromises.
• Envelope and energy efficiency requirements:
especially quantifying & incentivizing savings from
passive design techniques
• Height limits for mass timber buildings
My trip to the Netherlands was an incredible experience
I’ll never forget. The beauty and igenuity was so
ubiquitous, it was almost hard to believe. The lessons
for architects are endless, and I hope Canadians will
adopt them while we face down our housing challenges.

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