Langerak, Leidsche Rijn

Langerak is one of the very few contributions by a British architect to Dutch mainstream housing. While conforming to Dutch conventions of layout and construction, the new-build scheme of 77 terraced houses for sale, designed by Maccreanor Lavington Architects, manifests a slightly English domestic character.

The housing scheme is part of Leidsche Rijn, a new satellite city of 30 000 people which is under development outside Utrecht and is the largest of the "Vinex" developments that make up the Dutch government's national housing programme. Leidsche Rijn has the homogeneous, low-density, new-build character of a 1970s British new town, though with a regimented rectilinear layout derived from the ubiquitous network of drainage ditches in the country's reclaimed polder land.

Maccreanor Lavington's housing is similarly rectilinear in layout, as a result of the tunnel-form system of precasting the concrete house frames. However, Langerak's bright orange clay-tiled roofs in a monopitch mansard formation add an untypically domestic touch with an English flavour.

The municipal planning brief for the site called for a hard edge facing perimeter access roads and a soft green centre, to be landscaped and maintained by the municipal authority, at an overall density of 37 dwellings per hectare. Mccreanor Lavington responded with a series of straight parallel terraces with living rooms facing south over private gardens. The north frontages face private garages across intimate communal patios.

The three-storey terrace houses are 5.4 or 5.5 m wide, and all the bathrooms and toilets are internal, relying on mechanical ventilation. The top floor bedrooms resemble lofts within the monopitch roof space and have only south-facing windows.

The kitchen overlooks the communal patio so that mothers can keep an eye on toddlers at play. House prices range from £125 000 to £166 000.