Fast Track

UNStudio has recently designed the urban vision for ‘ The SmartestNeighbourhood in the World’, which is currently being developed in Helmond’s Brandevoort District in the Netherlands. Rather than as a predetermined fixed plan, UNStudio’s urban vision describes a flexible grid that is developed per the users’ demand.

The new neighbourhood is planned based on the latest insights and techniques in the areas of circularity, participation of ( future) inhabitants, social cohesion and safety, health, data, new transport technologies and independent energy systems. All of these facets will contribute to the creation of a sustainable and unique living environment: Brainport Smart District ( BSD).

The urban vision was created in a collaboration between UNStudio ( project lead and urban planning) and Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners, ( ecology and landscape), Metabolic ( Circularity and climate adaptation), Habidatum ( data analysis) and UNSense ( Data and technology strategy).

Over the next ten years, the Brainport Smart

District will develop 1,500 new homes and 12 hectares of business premises. The development will be characterised by the application of the latest technologies and knowledge in order to achieve a sustainable, circular and socially cohesive neighbourhood that enjoys joint energy generation, food production, water management, joint digital data management and revolutionary transport systems.

The total surface of Brainport Smart District is 155

hectares: bigger than 320 football fields. UNStudio’surban plan offers maximum opportunity for growth with a flexible framework of incremental density. Factoring future economic and social flux, the site is parcelled into a series of strips ( from north to south) that demarcates the district into ten parts, offering a diversity of urban and landscape densities and use.