Maakbaarheid

MaakbaarheidFacts on the Ground in Rotterdam

Lay-out09p l a t f o r m f o r r e c e n t d e s i g n r e s e a r c h

Lay-out is an irregularly issued

publication devoted to design

research undertaken with support

from the Netherlands Architecture

Fund. The Fund invites design

firms to compile an issue of

Lay-out. Lay-out 09 Maakbaar-

heid is published in a special

English edition.

Maakbaarheid is a project

within the context of the 4th

International Architecture

Biennale Rotterdam by Crimson

Architectural Historians on the

post-war urban landscape in

Rotterdam. Ideas of makeability

from the 1950s to the present day

are the inspiration for bottom-up

designs that look to the future.

Nine concrete design proposals

for nine existing Rotterdam

locations are presented, all of

them designed in collaboration

with many local stakeholders.

Maakbaarheid

2carnisse

Carnisse

4Hilleplein

6Klooster

8Hofbogen

10

Kleinpolder

14Park Knot Hoboken

16Central District

18Spangen Traindike

20Waalhavenstrip

22

A project by Crimson ArchitecturalHistorians presented at the 4th InternationalArchitecture Biennale Rotterdam in the fallof 2009. Following a critical analysis ofurban planning in Rotterdam from the1950s to the present day, nine urbanprojects are being proposed for ninelocations in the city. Crimsons historicaland political analysis of Rotterdam revealsan ongoing belief in the maakbaarheid(Dutch for makeability) of urban societythat has informed urban policies andprojects for more than half a century. All thelocations are symptomatic of the inertia oreven paralysis that is currently grippingurban planning and development inRotterdam and causing the city to fragment.Urban ideals therefore remain theoreticaland ineffective. Crimson identifies theongoing privatization and deregulation ofplanning in the past decades as one of themajor causes of the decline of Rotterdamplanning. Particularly problematic is the lossof a coherent body of knowledge about thecity as the basis for its development.

To address this problem, Crimson has triedto inject deep knowledge of the citys urbanhistory into a deregulated planning anddevelopment process. The goal is to havenine projects of a limited scale that arerealistic and at the same time representtypical situations in the urban and economicstructure of contemporary Rotterdam.Continuity and coherence is sought on twolevels: with the sites history and with thecity as a whole.

Each project started out with a coalition oflocal parties, developers, housingcorporations, activists, entrepreneurs, homeowners associations, each with theirspecific interests, agendas and know-howrelevant for the location. Crimson combinedthese questions into realistic briefs andmatched them to architects and urbanplanners. With the historical site analysis asa basis, a collective design process wasstarted, to which each party contributed itsspecific interest and knowledge, with thedeveloper or the housing corporation takingthe lead and committing to the futurerealization of the project.

These are the Facts on the Ground withwhich Crimson wishes to demonstrate

a) that knowledge of the development andhistory of sites is not only crucial but alsoinspiring for the reanimation of difficult andseemingly inert urban situations

b) that urban ideals of openness,emancipation, modernity and coherence canalso be realized in a deregulated, privatizedcity with many stakeholders

c) that forming coalitions with relevantstakeholders is the basis for any urbanproject that wishes to combine idealismwith realism

2 l a y - o u t p l a t f o r m f o r r e c e n t d e s i g n r e s e a r c h

MaakbaarheidFacts on the Ground in Rotterdam

Reinventing Urban Projects in Rotterdamand searching for a new Credibility for Architecture and Planning after the Financial Crisis of 2008

Maakbaarheid is an enigmatic Dutch term that usuallyrefers to a period in Dutch society in the 1960s and1970s when government policies were explicitly aimed atspreading wealth, knowledge and power through massivebottom-up emancipation policies. Maakbaarheid is difficult totranslate. Literally, its meaning lies somewhere betweenmakeable and feasible; conceptually it is connected to termssuch as social engineering, with a strong whiff of progressivepublic interventionism.

The integration machineThirty or forty years ago, these interventions consisted ofequalising incomes and the education system in order tostimulate individuals from all classes to develop and educatethemselves. It also meant large subsidies for non-elitistcultural, musical and art initiatives. Under the umbrella of thegovernment, different parties housing corporations, tradeunions and entrepreneurs worked on creating an idealmodel of society through planning. Architecture, planning andhousing were important aspects of this maakbaresamenleving (makeable society): designing it, shaping it,contributing to it and presenting it. In short, maakbaarheidwas the Dutch interpretation of the current biennales maintheme: the Open City the city as an integration machineencouraging distinct communities and groups to settle,interact and establish dynamic relationships.

Rotterdam, the ultimate Maakbaar cityMaakbaarheid is not just about describing a quality orfunction of urban spaces; rather, it denotes the way thatthese spaces are produced. Crimsons initiative focuses onRotterdam, widely seen as the unofficial centre ofarchitectural and urbanistic energy in the Netherlands. Itexamines ways of making the Open City here, harnessing astrong public ambition to shape architecture using the bestfigures of the design world. That this initiative to revitalise thearchitects role in shaping society comes from Rotterdamseems inevitable. The city is not just a magnet for

architectural firms, Rotterdam is also maakbaarheids locusclassicus: the ultimate makeable city, having been remade inradically different shapes several times in the last centuryalone.

Graveyard of urban planningBy a curious coincidence, maqbar is also the Persian wordfor graveyard. Perhaps this is a better description ofRotterdam, which, despite its heroic aspects and can-doidealism, is also strewn with the cadavers of past attempts toshape society through architecture and urban planning. Thenumber of times a new project has promised to reinvent thecity is far outweighed by the number of times the idea ofshaping urban society through architecture has been declaredofficially dead. The optimism of the IABR comes at a timewhen Rotterdam is facing the consequences of the globaleconomic crisis more intensely than any other city in theNetherlands. Politically, it has abandoned most if not all of itspublic planning ambitions and its architects offices arescrambling to survive, forced to shed the experimental,speculative urban ambitions on which their international famehas been based. Smaller offices are filing for bankruptcy at analarming rate. Larger partnerships from Rotterdam (forinstance KCAP, Ector Hoogstad Architecten, Claus en Kaanand EGM) are also suffering, but are predicted to come outas strong monopolists, dividing up jobs and commissionsfrom increasingly risk-averse clients among themselves. Theurban renewal process of the past decade, involving animmensely complex coalition of public and private institutionsand corporations, is now more or less accepted as acomplete failure, without any measurable effect on theliveability (economic strength, crime rate or education levels)of the areas involved.

Rotterdam, closed cityOn a political and moral level the idea of Rotterdam as aprogressive, modern and open city has also become harder todefend since the introduction of Rotterdam Law, a

Maakbaarheid in the 50s, Lijnbaan Area Rotterdam, Van den Broek & Bakema/Maaskant & Van Tijen 1953

controversial set of legal tools used to limit the numberpeople on benefits who arent native to the city from gettinghouses in certain neighbourhoods. The Rotterdam Law is justone example of a whole new set of policies and politicalagendas aimed at discouraging the concentration of poorpeople and ethnic minorities. So for nearly a decade,Rotterdam has been carefully crafting tools for demographiccontrol over its citizenry, a control that often goes beyond theso-called makeability of society, associated with the leftist1970s.

No more wishful thinkingThere is also a parallel between the many overblown urbanplans recently proposed for Rotterdam, and its inclination toselect, stop, spread and concentrate its inhabitants accordingto income, ethnicity or religious beliefs. There is a famousinterview with former mayor Ivo Opstelten popular for hisunwavering commitment to repressing small-time criminality in which he discusses the constant eviction of heroin addictsand dealers from squats in poor neighbourhoods. He alsotells a critical journalist that if you keep on spreading aroundthe addicts and dealers for long enough, they will simplyevaporate.

In the face of all this wishful thinking about the maakbaarheidof Rotterdam, we are forced to accept that sometimes theambitious urban schemes, argued and designed in the spiritof the Open City, are mere window dressing. Does thisrender hopeless or corrupt the assumption that maakbaarheidcould be reintroduced as a viable route towards consciouslyand rationally constructing the Open City? Possibly, but firstit is important to reconstruct when, where, by whom and forwhat purposes the term has been used in the past fewdecades. Doing so gives a perspective on planning and socialengineering in the Netherlands that is infinitely moreambiguous, contradictory and rich than the familiar mantrathat Dutch society used to be maakbaar, but now it isntanymore. It also acts as a rebuttal to the opaque way in which

architecture and urban planning are being used to manipulateand manufacture society.

Nine realistic projectsTo this end, Crimson has organised nine realistic projects inwhich design is not used to imagine a future as a way torevolutionise the present, but as a tool to change a specificsituation and architecturally represent existing programmesand urgent spatial questions. The radical quality lies in notimagining a different societal set-up, but in accepting andunderstanding existing roles and possibilities and workingwith them to achieve precise and limited goals. Theseprojects neither assume the return of public planning as weknew it, nor do they propose visionary solutions. They are notbig plans, they are small plans though this doesnt meanthe actual scale is small or is unrelated to a larger context.On the contrary, each small project is embedded in a larger-scale analysis of the urban context and accepts the currentplaying field of highly decentralised and privatised urbandevelopment, planning and policymaking.

Coalitions of partnersEach project is based upon a coalition of partners, with thearchitect present from the outset to synthesise the variousideas and interests. In these coalitions as opposed to manyof the partnerships since the 1990s the roles,responsibilities and agendas of the different players aresharply defined. All parties share an interest in establishingOpen City qualities, by connecting different user groups,areas, programmes and institutions. All parties are alsoconvinced of the spatial and social need for lessfragmentation, less segregation, more cohesion and morecoexistence.

Within this consensus, each participant has a distinct role.Municipal urban planners offer their knowledge of the city andof the long-term developments in order to embed eachproject in municipal policies. Client-users mostly housingcorporations and project developers provide a question andan idea of use. Architects translate the question into a spatialand symbolic answer. Uniting these disciplines, Crimsonedits, defines and poses the question in such a way that allparties can work together for the higher goal of developingrealistic urban projects based on real needs. Presenting thisprocess as transparently as possible opens up the possibilityof a new culture of makeability in urbanism.

Urban speculationThough the projects will be realised in practice, they alsocontain a level of urban speculation for other parties todevelop. So each project consists of a real part, and thepotential of further development. In financial terms, they aresafe, dependable options that aim to re-establish trust inarchitecture, planning and development as investments thatactually deliver. To achieve this it is crucial that the privateinterests of the stakeholders and the public interest of theproject are clearly separated and articulated, as should alsobe the distinction between the real and speculative aspects.

In terms of the public agenda, each project tries to achieveauthentic maakbaarheid goals.

Waalhaven In Waalhaven, an industrial zone between theharbour and the city, the aim is to provide new workspacesthat spatially reconnect the two zones while also opening upeconomic possibilities for the inhabitants of the neighbouringarea, so potentially emancipating young, immigrant citizens.

Spangen In Rotterdam-West the area of intervention is theformer harbour-train dyke between Spangen (a once shinyexample of social-democratic maakbaarheid from the 1920s,but by now a largely immigrant area with problems of drugs,crime and unemployment), and an isolated triangle filled withpublic amenities such as a petting zoo, swimming pool andsports fields. The project consists of transforming the dykeand adjacent area into new types of public space that can beshared and used, opening up and intensifying the use of thepublic facilities by the inhabitants of Spangen.

The convent In the 19th-century area of Rotterdam-Noord,another project centres around Het Klooster, a formerconvent which, like the area surrounding it, has suffered theeffects of recent urban renewal. By analysing the buildingsinherent spatial and architectural qualities, a set offunctionally fitting programmes is distilled in order to re-embed the historic structure within the neighbourhood. At thesame time, the surrounding public space is redesigned andreorganised, including the adjacent and now introvertedpublic and cultural amenities (school, church, cultural centre,houses, old peoples home). Out of the resulting square andthe adjacent amenities, the project aims to create a vibrantneighbourhood centre.

Hilleplein Hemmed in between railway lines, busy roads, aschool building and Rotterdams largest mosque lies Hille-plein, bordering on some of the citys most disenfranchisedneighbourhoods. Here, the project consists of developing a

new landmark for education and culture, including a library,neighbourhood centre and houses. Rather than trying toreinstate spatial continuity in a completely fragmented area, itseeks to establish a new sense of urban dignity by focusingon a public programme and high-quality architecture.

Carnisse The many standard 1940s blocks built byarchitect Jo van den Broek present a completely differentchallenge. In Carnisse, an area which has one of the lowestreal-estate values in the city, flat ownership is largely inprivate hands. To prevent a downward cycle it is necessary toaddress the technical as well as spatial problems of theblocks. The aim is to give the owners of the small apartmentsan architectural toolbox to take the refurbishment of theirblocks into their own hands, thereby improving their livingconditions as well as the overall attractiveness of the area.

Hofbogen The soon-to-be abandoned Hofbogen train linedates from the early 20th century and includes two stationsand almost 2km of viaduct, running through a 19th-centuryarea in the north of Rotterdam. This viaduct will beredeveloped through a series of new commercial and culturalprogrammes and this project will reanimate the surroundingcity and transform the train line from a barrier into aconnective element.

Central district Following World War II, the centre ofRotterdam was extensively rebuilt and the effects of this stillendure in the ubiquitous zoning of functions. In theredevelopment around Central Station this zoning runs therisk of creating a monofunctional and isolated area, whileerasing the small-scale creative economy already establishedthere. The brief for this so-called Central District forciblyconnects the isolated super development around the trainstation with the potential circuits and routes of the inner city.Replacing the tabula rasa approach by a gradual growthmodel forms an integral part of the redevelopment.

Kleinpolder The Kleinpolderplein is one of the mostimpressive highway sections in the city but it bisects aneighbourhood, causing a destructive impact on thesurrounding urban areas. This project aims to tunnel, bridge,resurface and penetrate the motorway in order to counter thisimpact and facilitate cross-traffic, especially pedestrians andcyclists.

Hoboken Finally, the Park-knot Hoboken project also aimsto bridge different parts of the city that have been separatedby infrastructure (in this case a dyke) to create a meaningfulcontinuous public space between three parks and the maincity hospital.

Site specific & straight forwardCreating a series of projects that share an ethos ofstraightforwardness and realism is surely more effective inanswering the citys needs than another out-of-the-boxalternative, or spectacular transformational vision. Asgenerations shift, so do the ethics of urban intervention,analogous with do-it-yourself punk bands and entrepreneurialhip-hop artists superceding the bombastic symphonic rockplayed by millionaires in sports arenas.

By re-embedding architectural and urban projects in thehighly specific context of a location, user and programme, wehope to save them from the damaging competition forattention and political support to which masterplans or grandvisions often fall victim. The straightforwardness of the site-specific project could be a much-needed antidote to thedegradation of credibility that big plans have brought toarchitecture and urban planning but making a small plan inno way means having small ambitions. Being precise aboutthe feasibility and the effectiveness of a plan means beingcompletely accountable, a risk that very few makers of bigplans are willing to take. Equally crucially, such projects setan example by showing what can be done, how it makes adifference, and that you can actually do it.


Maakbaarheid in the 70s, Heliport housing, Jan Verhoeven 1977

Maakbaarheid in the 90s, Erasmusbridge, Van Berkel & Bos 1996

Maakbaarheid in the 00s, restoration of the Steamship Rotterdam, 2009

3000 Identical ApartmentsThe project for the neighborhood of Carnisse is focused on aseries of near identical housing blocks that were built inclusters. Not only in Carnisse, but through out the entire cityof Rotterdam a total of 3000 apartments was built between1938 and 1941. This wave of standardized blocks,indistinguishable except for tiny manipulations that make themfit in the different urban contexts, adds up to 1 % of the totalamount of dwellings in Rotterdam in 2009. As such it is oneof the most successful experiments in standardizationundertaken in the pre-war period by any architect from themodern movement.

The Modern Workers DwellingJ.H. van den Broek, famous for his open courtyard block withflexible floor plans in the Vroesenlaan, had been seeking waysto solve the problem of building large numbers of good,

modern workers housing. He had reached the conclusion thatthe problem was neither technical nor architectural, but ratherorganizational and managerial. Only when the private buildingcompanies would be able to make a profit on cheapapartments, there would be a dependable production.Subsidies by cities and the national government,industrialization or architectural visionary plans could produceonly tiny realized experiments, but not the necessary largequantities of better cheap housing.

Collectivity & BuildingVan den Broek provided the small building businesses ofRotterdam with a package deal. It consisted of a typical floorplan, a building system, an urban envelope and a set of urbanand architectural guidelines. The builders could invest in oneor more units of six dwellings around a staircase. They coulddecide -within slim margins- on the placement of the


CarnisseCoalition

Design: DaF Architects

(Rotterdam, NL) Daan Bakker,

Catherine Visser, Paul van der

Voort, Laura Orr, Marie-

Antonietta Cossu, Polle Koks,

Marieke Veling

Projectdeveloper: Com Wonen

Arno van der Laan, Folkert

Schroten, Jan Kooistra, Myrna

Tholens

Historic research and coordi-

nation: Crimson Architectural

Historians

Urban plan for Rotterdam South, W. Witteveen 1937

Axonometry Vogelbuurt (Birdnames Neighborhood), J.H. van den Broek 1940

Blocks Algemeen Belang (Common Interest), J.H. van den Broek 1938

Rotterdam South, 2009


balconies, the kitchen and a third bedroom. Collectively theywould order the building materials, set the rents, and arrangethe building permits and the urban design. The result waslong slabs of walk up flats, three stories high, built by up tosix different small family contractors. They flanked the newstreets in Rotterdam south, west and north.

Pleasantly MessyBetween 1938 and 1940 a total of 753 apartments was built.The package deal turned out to be a huge success. Thewartime destruction created a demand for thousands of newhouses. Van den Broeks model was rolled out over the citywith a speed and on a scale that was entirely unforeseen byboth the architect and the builders. The result is fourneighborhoods in Rotterdam, entirely consisting of 3000 ofVan den Broeks utterly simplified modernist apartments.Never having been owned, rented out or maintained byhousing corporations or large developers, the blocks, thestreets and courtyards have developed in a pleasantly messyway. People have added their own balcony fences, gardensheds, front doors and paintwork. The uniformity of the blockshas been transcended by seventy years of private use.

Time For Another RoundThe fact that these blocks have been and will stay privatelyowned, has produced highly specific neighborhoods, with arare urban quality, like Carnisse. At the same time, thesecheap dwellings, built in some of the poorest urban areas ofRotterdam, are threatened by urban blight, vacancies, illegalusage and physical decay. With not one single owner to bemade responsible this asks for another round of innovativearchitectural solutions.

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approach ofthe architects and the historical knowledge of the area havebeen synthesized into the following design brief.

- Develop a toolbox of architectural interventions, with whichindividuals and homeowner associations can enlarge,maintain, renovate and transform their apartments and theirsegments of the slabs

- Develop an architectural language that allows fordifferentiation, but still stays within the grammar used byVan den Broek in 1938

- Make sure that these interventions are realizable, technicallyand financially

- Take one of the clusters of six flats around a staircaseowned by the housing corporation, as a showcase for therealization of the toolbox

Expansion and adaptation of a balcony

Adaptations Urkersingel

Adaptations Urkersingel

Anything But A SquareHilleplein, meaning Hille-square, is anything but a square; it is a place where the prewar workers housing of Hillesluisunravels into a seemingly suburban or even ex-urbancondition of a motorway overpass, a train line, largemegastores and a soccer stadium. The red brick apartmentsand the streets are separated from all these elements by theviaduct that cuts through like a knife. The still unfinishedEssalam Mosque dominates the area.

Where The City Met The HarborUntil just 1980, this area had a totally different atmosphere. A huge pedestrian bridge carried the workers to and from thewharves on the other side of the train yard, and during the

weekend the fans of the Feijenoord Soccer Stadium. Manybars and cafes existed around what is now the raggedemptiness at the edge of the neighborhood. Also then thearea was complex and chaotic. Its landscape was deter-mined by old dikes and polders and by some of the firstattempts to build cheap housing for the explosively growingharbor city of the late nineteenth century. This was wherethe city met the harbor, to mutual benefit and mutualannoyance.

Left In The ShadowsThe harbor left the city from the sixties onwards. The citytried to find ways to fill in the left over spaces. This causedthe degradation of what is now called Hilleplein. First thedisappearance of the wharves and their replacement bysuburban housing meant that the people of RotterdamSouth needed no longer to cross the train yard. Secondlythe redevelopment of the former harbor areas with the Kopvan Zuid Waterfront development caused the building of theLaan op Zuid, a huge boulevard going from north to south,but passing by Hillesluis, leaving it in the shadows.

Moroccan Community, Dubai Money, Egyptian StyleWhat once was the center of the neighborhood became astrange left over space on its edge. The decision was madeto build the Mosque here, perhaps as a cause for newcentrality: the largest one in Western Europe, built by Polishbuilders for the Moroccan Community, with Dubai money,designed by a Dutch Firm, in the Egyptian Style. Beautiful asthis building may be, it stands isolated, forlornly amidst thepoor brick houses and the busy traffic. Other developmentshave gone in the same direction: large apartment buildings,primary schools, randomly strewn over the urban landscape.


Hilleplein

Which Hardware?What we see in Hilleplein could be described as a landscapeof urban disintegration. Big objects and large infrastructuralworks are passing each other by. The blocks and streets of theformer workers neighborhoods are disconnected from theirsurroundings. This is an area with a huge memory of nearlyone and a half century of permanent and often radical change,and three decades of failed attempts to stitch together itsfragments. It is also an authentically proletarian urban neigh-borhood, multi-ethnic, poor, but vibrant and with a sense ofcommunity. Which hardware could best serve such software?


- Create a building that through its program, its visualpresence and its spatial structure plays the role of asquare: a meeting place and a symbolic gathering place forthe neighborhood

- Design a multifunctional building, housing a primary school,housing for the elderly, social and cultural functions, officespace and reception for the housing corporation, and aparking garage

- In the design of the building, reflect the contrasting andeventful history of its surroundings, such as the pre warbrick housing, the steelyards and wharves where theworkers used to be employed, the exotic architecture of thenew Mosque and the fact that this area once was and couldagain be a social heart of the neighborhood

Coalition

Design: FAT Architects

(London, UK) Sam Jacob

Projectdeveloper: Woonstad

Rotterdam Edwin Dortland,

Theo Voogd

Other participants: De Piramide

Rene Ketting, Cheryl Kurstjens



Historians

Hilleplein, 1898

Hilleplein, 1933

Hilleplein, 2009 Hilleplein 30s, looking towards pedestrian bridge to the shipyards


key:

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

1

2 3

3

4 5

67

8

9

10 11

GROUNDD FLOORR PPLAN

1

2

5

6

7.

3

4

key:1. ground level, +1.0m2 . cafe level, +1.4m3. retail unit, +1.4m4. cafe, +1.4m5. accommodation entrance, +1.0m6. peuters & kleuters, +1.0m7. playground, +1.0m

ROOF PLAN

key:

2

3

4

6

1

5

Hilleplein schoolbuilding

Roof: playground primary school

3d to 5th floor, left: housing, right: primary school

Groundfloor, public function, right: primary school and daycare center

Roofscape

Entrance groundfloor Interior primary school

Catholic ConventThe red brick fortress like compound Het Klooster (TheConvent) is a witness to the strong historic presence ofCatholics in the predominantly protestant city of Rotterdam.The building, designed by Jos Margry (1912-1922), is part ofa whole generation of monumental catholic churches, schoolsand convents. They were built in the first quarter of thetwentieth century, throughout Rotterdam, when the city wasgrowing at an unprecedented pace. All of these buildingswere built in a clearly identifiable catholic style. Thisparticular building, dedicated to the Saint Hildegardis, formeda catholic cluster with the neogothic Hildegardis church nextto it. Margrys father, Evert, built it in 1890.

Rare Monumental ObjectsWhen the Church and the Convent were built, they were raremonumental objects in a hardly planned, extremely denselybuilt up workers neighborhood in Rotterdam-North. The nunsin the convent were also the teachers in the primary schooland the nursery. They played a central role in the busyproletarian neighborhood, filled with immigrants from thecatholic southern regions of The Netherlands. The nunsthemselves were not allowed out on the streets. This explainsthe structure of the building. The buildings interior circulationand its connections to the outside world were planned tomake sure that the nuns could reach every part of the buildingfrom their quarters, while the people could enter and leavethe building at certain points. Thereby the building hasbecome both an open public centre, and a closed, mysteriousintroverted block. It consisted of three parts: the conventwhere the nuns lived, and around two courtyards were theschool and the nursery. The middle and most clearlyneogothically designed part holds the mensa and the chapelfor the nuns.

Ruthless RenovationIf we flash forward to the late seventies and eighties,Rotterdam was going through huge changes due to de-industrialization, immigration and secularization. The Conventdid not fare well, neither did the neighborhood. After the lastnuns had left and the school was closed, the building was,unlike many of its kind in Rotterdam, not demolished. It wasre-used as a community centre, cheap and small housing,school and day care centre. To house all these functions aruthless interior and external renovation was carried through,that catered to every detail of the new program, but with totalignorance of the buildings monumental architecturalpotentials.

Urban RenewalThe same thing happened to the neighborhood as a whole.As part of the urban renewal aiming to improve housingconditions, the area was renovated. This was done withruthless disregard for the architectural characteristics, butpurely with functional, economic and hygienic goals. One ofthe results was the replacement of all original windowopenings by ugly plastic windows; the once clear urbanstructure became confused, with blocked streets and illogicaldesign of routes and squares. The convent building is now abadly deteriorated closed block, forbidding because of thirty-year-old renovations and an overload of fences and blockeddoors. Its interior is a maze of small rooms and corridors.

Again A Focal PointThe Convent and its immediate surroundings can be restoredto its original state of a focal point for a proletarianneighborhood, which is getting more popular every day. Thesensitivity of the archaeologist combined with the optimism ofthe architect is needed to clear out thirty years of clutter.What could be a contemporary reincarnation of the original


KloosterCoalition

Design: DaF Architecten

(Rotterdam, NL) Daan Bakker,

Catherine Visser, Paul van der

Voort, Laura Orr, Marie-

Antonietta Cossu, Polle Koks,

Marieke Veling

Projectdeveloper: Woonstad

Rotterdam (Gerdie Bours with

Gerhard Hup)

Other participants: local

municipality Rotterdam Noord,

Riette van der Werff, KDV

(Jos Slobbe, Renate Verschoor)

and inhabitants of Het Klooster

and surrounding area



Historians

combination of openness and closedness? Of the mystery ofthe convent versus the daily use of the school and thenursery, that determined the buildings quality?

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approachof the architects and the historical knowledge of the areahave been synthesized into the following design brief.

- Counter the closed and hermetic character of the originalbuilding, exacerbated by the installation of fences and othersecurity measures in the eighties, and focus on creatingconnections to the surrounding streets and squares

- Precisely understand and unravel the inner labyrinth ofspaces and corridors and reintroduce a spatial andfunctional clarity

- Work from the inside out, by first introducing piecemealinterventions that then spill out over the entire building andthe surrounding neighborhood

- Re-animate Het Klooster as a social and cultural icon in theneighborhood

- Propose effective measures to reorganize the placing ofcultural and social buildings in the block-street-squareurban structure of Het Oude Noorden

Garden daycare center, before 1960

Cloister, before 1960

Hildegardis Convents first sisters, 1923

Groundfloorplan Hildegardis Convent, J. Margry 1922

Streetview Hildegardis Convent, J. Margry 1922

Land use plan for Het Oude

Noorden (Old North Neighbor-

hood), 1900

Het Oude Noorden, 2009


Het Oude Noorden before and after interventions DaF

Garden daycare center, spring 2009 Garden daycare center, summer 2009, after first intervention by DaF

Youth center and caf, after restorationFacade Convent after selective cleaning and restoration

Public space after interventions DaF

Untying the knot: school + daycare

center + youth center + neighbor-

hood center + housing + caf

189 ArchesThe Hofplein viaduct is a 1.9 km long viaduct, built in thenorthern part of Rotterdam in the early 20th century. Itconsists of 189 arches and forms the start of a railway linelinking Rotterdam with The Hague and Scheveningen. TheHofplein line was a luxurious and comfortable alternative tothe existing railway line to The Hague via Delft and mainlycarried seaside visitors from Rotterdam to Scheveningen andcommuters from The Hague and Wassenaar. The building of the Hofplein viaduct, which took place in1905-1907, was a spectacular breakthrough in thedevelopment of railway viaduct construction. Never beforehad an elevated railway been built that consisted only ofreinforced concrete. For this, the Hofplein viaduct wasdeclared a national heritage in 2002. It was also the firstelectric railway line in the Netherlands.

Crossing The City And The PolderThe starting point of the Hofplein line was situated in theinner city of Rotterdam with a monumental station buildingStation Hofplein. The viaduct continued into the northernparts of Rotterdam, crossing the existing 19th centuryneighbourhoods all the way up till the city boundary at thetime, the Bergweg station. From there on the viaduct slicedthrough the still virginal polder landscape, until it reached itsend near the Noordercanal. As the city expanded, the surrounding farmland wastransformed into new neighbourhoods on both sides of theviaduct during the beginning of the 20th century. By the1940s the city boundary was already pushed up until theNoordercanal. The viaduct became completely enclosed, andat certain points the line was literally wedged in by these laterurban expansions.

Becoming A Warehouse BuildingAlthough originally planned as an open structure, immediatelyafter its completion in 1908 the arches in the first part of theviaduct were filled with simple wooden facades to be used assmall shops, ateliers and storage space. This processcontinued rapidly after the bombardment of Rotterdam in1940. The shortage of workspaces in the city centre led tothe complete filling in of the structure. The original openconstruction transformed into an elongated warehousebuilding, forming a 2 km barrier in the northern part of thecity. Nonetheless, the activities in the arches also served theneighbourhoods, therefore the viaduct became at the sametime much more integrated in the urban environment.

New Perspectives NeededBut: The original grandeur of the viaduct and its stations wassoon lost after WWII. Firstly, Station Hofplein was largely


HofbogenCoalition

Design: ATELIER SERAJI

ARCHITECTES & ASSOCIES

(Paris, FR) Nasrine Seraji,

Roland Oberhofer, Nicolas

Fevrier, Nick Risteen

Project developer: Hofbogen BV

in corporation with Vestia Noord

(Marije Faber) and Projectgroep

Zomerhofkwartier (PWS

Rotterdam, Com Wonen and

OPP/BVG)

Other participants: NADC Hoi

Chin Chong, Estrade Projecten

Gijs van der Kleij



Historians

Hofbogen (Elevated Trainline Hofplein), 1915 Hofbogen, 2009

Hofbogen, Zomerhofstraat, 1908 Hofbogen, Vijverhofstraat, 1920s

Station Hofplein after the bombardment, 1945

Hofbogen, 1947


destroyed in 1940. As a direct result of the post war urbanrenewal plan for the inner city of Rotterdam (Basisplan, 1946)the once iconic station was now tucked away in a corner forno one to see. Secondly, the maintenance of the viaduct wasextremely poor and the arches were filled in a random way. Itled to a cacophonic image of loud facades that attracted badtenants, creating unattractive and unsafe spaces in andalongside the structure. The surrounding neighbourhoodswere largely inhabited by immigrants. They were in declineand dealt with unemployment and crime. In 2007 two of them(Bergpolder and Agniesebuurt) were officially proclaimedproblem areas by the Dutch Ministry of Housing. In 2010 the viaduct will lose its original function because thecurrent Randstadrail will discontinue its service on theHofplein viaduct, leaving the 2km long roof of the viaductempty. How can the viaduct spatially and programmatically berenewed and reconnected to its urban context?

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approachof the architects and the historical knowledge of the areahave been synthesized into the following design brief:

- Redevelop the soon to be abandoned train line Hofbogenwith a series of new housing, commercial, and culturalprograms in and around this longest building of Rotterdam

- Focus on two development areas in the direct proximity ofthe viaduct: Zomerhofkwartier and Bergpolder. Combine thedesign proposals with the existing plans for the futuretransformation of the upper deck of the viaduct into a newpublic and collective space and aim to strengthen bothprogrammes

- Reanimate, through these interventions, the surroundingcity and turn the train line from a barrier into a connectiveelement

Teilingerstraat

Berweg

Bergselaan

Berkelselaan

Gordelweg

A20 E19 E25

Heer Bokelweg

PARIS

ROTTERDAM

PARK

PROGRAM

AR

CH

ITE

CT

UR

E

PARKPROGRAMCITY

PARKPROGRAMCITYPARK

PROGRAMCITY

NEW YORK

HIGH LINE

PROMENADE PLANTE

HOFBOGEN

CITY

PARK

Hofbogen as a sequence of new

urban neighborhoods

Comparison with other urbanized former trainlines


Bergpolder, close to Bergwegstation Bergpolder, close to Bergwegstation

Zomerhof quarter


Zomerhof quarter

Proposal for Hofbogen as part of Agniese neighborhoodProposal for Hofbogen, crossing highwayA20

Kleinpolderplein, the massive traffic interchange on thenorthern edge of the city, splits the community of Overschiein two halves. It also separates the area from the rest of cityfor all but motorists. Its impressive yet traumatic presence inthe middle of the city shows how urban development andtraffic planning have developed in different directions, mostlyignoring each other, while sharing the same, scarce, space.

Tree Lined AvenueOriginally, Overschie was a mediaeval village betweenRotterdam and Delft. The explosive growth of Rotterdam inthe early twentieth century absorbed it. Already in 1928 anurban plan was drawn up, embedding the old village core inthe same system of blocks, squares and streets as those ofthe new northwestern neighborhoods of Rotterdam. At thesame time the new road from Rotterdam to Delft was alsoplanned and constructed straight through the newlyexpanding Overschie. It was then supposed to become awide, tree-lined avenue.

Highway SystemJust before WWII it was decided that the new road should beexclusively built for motorcars, anticipating the post warhighway system. During WWII the autocratic occupationgovernment finally pushed through the long awaitedannexation of Overschie. But urban developments after thewar did not cause the spatial integration of Overschie intoRotterdam. Under the new urbanistic regime of theBauhasler Lotte Stam-Beese, the pre war organic urban


Klein-polder

Coalition

Design: Maxwan Architects +

Urbanists (Rotterdam, NL)

Rients Dijkstra, Hiroki Matsuura,

Martijn Anhalt, with Arthur

Borejszo, Jason Hilgefort, Nara

Lee, Nobuki Ogasahara, Michiel

Raats, Kris Schaasberg, Harm te

Velde Special thanks to Baukuh

Project developer: Woonstad

Rotterdam Dominique

Strrmann, Gerben in t Hout, Kay

Schellen

Other participants: dS+V Inge

Breugem, local municipality

Overschie Dick van Dongen,

Observatorium Ruud

Reutelingsperger and Rijks-

waterstaat



Historians

design of Overschie was overlain with a modernisticapproach. In a combination of functionalist design and NewTown planning, Overschie was treated as a separate entity. The fifties ushered in the era of highway planning. TheNetherlands were covered with a network of concretehighways, designed top down and projected on thelandscape.

Disastrous Sophisticated PlanningPrecisely where Overschie meets Rotterdam a double oval oftraffic interchanges was implanted to receive the newhighway A13. Less than a decade later, when Overschie wasnearly finished, the ovals were turned into the largest three-dimensional interchange of the Netherlands. Four layers oftunnels and flyovers knotted together into a magnificent ifotherworldly concrete and asphalt sculpture. This futuristicobject was surrounded by small-scale suburban houses fromthe thirties and carefully placed modernist slabs in the gardencity from the fifties. While both elements are the result ofsophisticated planning, their disastrous meeting was neverwished for, nor avoided.

Pragmatic SolutionsSince its construction, no convincing solutions have been putforward to change this situation, except the proposition ofanother highway to the east, making the A13 redundant. Butthis idea already dates from the nineteen fifties.... In the meantime Overschie, hidden behind the interchange ofKleinpolderplein, has held on to its identity as a veryparticular urban village that has learned to live with theconcrete monster that sits in its middle. But it is segregatedby the highway into a popular western part and a much lessdesirable eastern part. Due to environmental, safety and health reasons, the highwayis covered with noise and pollution barriers, making it evenmore of an obstacle. Every morning and afternoon theinterchange is packed with traffic jams. It was not the job ofthe traffic planners to make the area accessible forpedestrians, cyclists or local traffic, and the urban plannerswere too convinced of the hopelessness of the situation. It is time for another approach. Instead of large scale andlong term ideas thought up by engineers and planners, weshould design pragmatic, realistic solutions, embedded in thereal needs and possibilities of Overschie.


- Develop a number of interventions to reconnect both halvesof Overschie where they are split apart by the A13 highway

- Develop an intervention for the Kleinpolderplein interchangeto improve the entrance to Overschie and reconnect thenetworks for cyclists and pedestrians

- Combine the infrastructural interventions with new spacesfor culture and social activities

Overschie, 1909 Overschie, urban plan by Lotte Stam

Beese 1952

Overschie, 2009

Rotterdam Ringroad, 60s Kleinpolderplein, early 60s


Underpass Zestienhovense Kade, current situation

Underpass through the Sidelinge Park, current situation

Intervention: smoothing out the edges of the underpass, integrating the road

into the Sidelinge park and creating shared space

Intervention: turning the Zestienhovense Kade underpass into a socio-cultural containerterminal to be

used for band practice, graffitti workshops, table tennis, solar studio, community center...

Intervention: reorganizing the margins of the traffic lanes into a logical, safe and visually arresting system for pedestrian

and bicycle use. Turning the space underneath Kleinpolderpleins Interchange into a monumental civic space

The Hoboken Park Knot that this project intends to untierefers to the untidy meeting of two large parks, two smallones and a gigantic medical complex (i.e. hospital, medicalfaculty, childrens hospital and research centres) around abusy urban traffic artery on an immense dike, protecting thecentre of Rotterdam against flooding. This knot is a small butcrucial element in the development of the Rotterdam Hobo-ken 2030 area, situated close to the Rotterdam city center.

19th Century PicturesqueIn the middle of the nineteenth century the first part of thearea was created, the Zocherspark: a huge park along theriver Maas in the English picturesque tradition designed bythe famous landscape architect J.D. Zocher. Its ponds,meadows, hills and clumps of trees were built at theperiphery of nineteenth century Rotterdam in the wake of theharbor development. The park was separated from the old cityby a low dike, carrying a semi-rural road, and by a green area,an immense emptiness called The Land of Hoboken. From the late nineteenth century onward this emptinessbecame surrounded by the explosively growing city. Manydifferent plans were proposed to build an entirely new citycentre here, but they were never executed. The landownerrefused to sell his lands to the Rotterdam authorities: the landof Hoboken stayed open.

Organic UrbanismFinally, in the late twenties a master plan by city planner W.G.Witteveen was accepted and realized. It used The Land ofHoboken as an immense green wedge stretching from theZocherspark into the city-center, organically flanked by brickbuilding blocks and monumental institutions and offices likethe Boymans van Beuningen Museum and the Unilever office.The plan also reorganized the cross-town traffic by building a

sunken highway connecting to the Maastunnel. When theSecond World War broke out, ca. 20% of this plan wasfinished, and its broad outlines are still the main structuringelements of this part of the city.

Metabolic Proto-High-Tech ComplexAfter the war, the promise of coherence was broken with theheightening of the dike to protect Rotterdam against the seaafter the great flood of 1953. This created a huge barrierbetween the different parks in the area and between the riverMaas and the residential areas of western Rotterdam. A series of rapid transformations and developments filled up the land and ruined the subtle integral urban design byWitteveen. Especially the Erasmus Medical Centre anduniversity that moved to this area produced one of theNetherlands most impressive metabolic proto-high-techarchitectural complexes of the sixties. Clad in the space agewhite panels designed by Jean Prouv, this masterpieceshowcased elevated streets, bridges, sunken plazas andhelicopter pads all across the Hoboken area.

Desperate Fragmentation + Enormous PossibilitiesIn the eighties and nineties, culture, art and architecturebecame major players in shaping the area. The Museum Parkand its central piece, the Kunsthal, were designed by OMAwith Yves Brunier. The northern part of the Hoboken area wasdedicated to the Netherlands Architecture Institute, designedby Jo Coenen. A Natural History Museum was renovated andenlarged by Erick van Egeraat. The result is an inner city areathat is successful and unique as a collection of elements andconfrontation of different qualities: The Boymans Museum, thenew cultural institutions, a collection of nineteenth centuryand twentieth century parks and the largest inner cityuniversity Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Theyre all

sandwiched between the city centre and the riverfront: a citybranders dream come true. But at the same time, it has become an area bearing the tracesof privatized and fragmented development. Most fragments areinaccessible from and for each other. The dike presents aformidable barrier. It prevents easy access to the beautiful butunderused Zochers Park. The Park Knot symbolizes thedesperate fragmentation of the city of Rotterdam, but also theenormous cultural possibilities of urban planning, landscapedesign and architecture.

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approach ofthe architects and the historical analysis of the area have beensynthesized into the following design brief.

- Counter the development in introverted zones with anapproach for the connecting public space

- Propose a solution for the barrier formed by the road-on-a-dike that splits apart the site

- Design a series of architectural and landscape interventionsto better connect the park and the hospital

- Propose programs and activities that would connect thecultural institutions, the hospital and the public space

- Absorb the wishes and ideas of the inhabitants and businessowners that have committed to the design process

- Create coherence, not with a new master plan, but with aseries of strategic interventions, based on a clear concept forthe identity and quality of this location


Park Knot Hoboken

Coalition

Design: ZUS [Zones Urbaines

Sensibles] (Rotterdam, NL)

Elma van Boxel, Kristian Koreman

Project developer: dS+V

Ilta van der Mast, Perry

Boomsluiter, Arjen Knoester

Other participants: inhabitants

and entrepreneurs of Hoboken,

partners Hoboken 2030



Historians

Hoboken, 2009Urban plan Hoboken, W. Witteveen,

1927

Hoboken, 1909Hoboken, 1875

Hoboken, 1915 Hoboken, 1973


Reconnecting Erasmus Medical Center, Museumpark, Kunsthal, Natural History

Museum, Zocherspark, and adding a new subterranean museum

View from Museumpark to Zochers Park, through Museum of Medical History

Museum for Medical History cut through the dike

Nervously Beating HeartRotterdams largest and symbolically most important urbanproject for the next decade is that of the drastic renewal of theCentral Train station and the surrounding area. Once upon atime, it was the nervously beating heart of Rotterdam, acomplex system of streets and blocks, a railway station, aseventeenth century city gate, lots of cafes and restaurants,small workshops and department stores around the perma-nently congested Hofplein square. Efforts by the best archi-tects and urbanists of the Netherlands from H.P. Berlage toW.G. Witteveen, Mart Stam, and J.J.P. Oud could not untie thisGordian knot. For that the destruction of the Rotterdam citycentre by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940 was needed.

Urban Emptiness Concrete MegabuildingsIts current form is mostly the result of the enormousreconstruction effort in the nineteen fifties that producedRotterdams new centre. At that time the symmetrical trafficinterchange Hofplein was built, with its fountain becomingone of the citys main landmarks. At the other end of thedistrict the Wholesale building was realized by the architectHugh Maaskant, one of Europes biggest and most ruthlesslyAmerican buildings at the time. The same Maaskant alsodesigned the glitzy marble Hilton Hotel right on Hofplein. TheItalianate Central Station now demolished was built bySybold van Ravensteyn and the constructivist looking RailwayPostal Office now renovated was designed byKraaijvanger. The wide Weena boulevard separated this family of immensehypermodern buildings, the likes of which the Netherlandshad not seen before, from the city. Up to the eighties theWeena boulevard was an urban emptiness temporarily usedfor parks, petting zoos, festivals and pavilions. Rotterdamacquired its reputation of a windy plateau strewn withforbidding concrete mega buildings and hardly a humanbuilding in sight.

In The Shadows Of PostmodernismThe eighties and nineties finally brought the new era ofwealth needed to finish the urban project. Alongside theboulevard a series of commercial office buildings waserected. They used local versions of internationalarchitectural styles, from late-modern Dallas-style glass wallsto post-modern Canary Wharf rip-offs. The new developmentson the Weena reduced the more discreet and smaller scaleblocks of the fifties to a position in second row. It was herethat vacant buildings were either squatted or rented out tosmaller businesses, often creative industries. They mixed withthe shady nightclubs that also flourished in the cheap andhidden atmosphere of Delftse Straat.

Welcome Back Open CityThe most recent wave of innovation, in the form of theCentral District plan implies the destruction of thedilapidated but vibrant Delftse Straat area. The developersand city planners wish to replace it with enormous new citybuildings. They would be both culturally and socially dynamicand open on the ground floor level, while creating enormousamounts of commercial real estate above. The main reference point for the modernization refers back tothe shape and atmosphere this area had until nearly seventyyears ago: the vibrant, busy, messy, small-scale yet metro-politan pre war Hofplein area. This urban space, so deeplyloathed by the pre-war planners and so thoroughly destroyedby the war and the subsequent reconstruction, now inspiresthe newest wave of innovation sweeping over the area.The creative industries on Delftse Straat already radiate thisdesired atmosphere. Can the existing conditions, users andprogram be included in the future development of thiscommercial and infrastructural district?


- Develop an area that is not compiled of isolatedarchitectural objects but that connects to the existingcentre of Rotterdam by means of a diversified urban circuit

- Use the existing programs, activities and users of theDelftse Straat area to lay the groundwork for the futureurban atmosphere and economy of the new Central Districtarea

- Working from the Dependance-concept for keepingcultural institutions in the centre, propose interventions thatwould turn Central District into a Cultural Central District

- Propose interventions that would turn either the location orthe building itself of Schiekade 189, into an intriguinggateway to the centre of Rotterdam, for pedestrians, cardrivers and train passengers


CentralDistrict

Coalition

Design: ZUS [Zones Urbaines

Sensibles] (Rotterdam, NL)

Elma van Boxel, Kristian Koreman

Project developer: LSI project

investment nv Fransje

Sprunken, Robbart Valk

Other participants: dS+V Fons

Meijer, Esther de Bever



Historians

Hofplein, 1923

Central District, 50s

Central District, 2009

Central District, 1903 Central District in the Basic Plan for

the reconstruction of Rotterdam City

Center, C. Van Traa 1946

Central District, 2009

The Dpendance, temporary venue for cultural institutions, opened 2009


Strategy for gradual urban development through stages of temporary urban conditions in stead of tabula rasa planning

System of canals creating a connective public circuit

Canal puncturing the Dependance

Network of public space in Rotterdam centre

Massive Brick Walls & Empty StreetsThe Spangen area was built from 1914 onwards as a housingdevelopment for workers in the new harbor areas. It wasdesigned using what was then the cutting edge avant-gardeof city planning and housing architecture. Radically socialdemocratic was also the fact that it was built publicly, not byprivate investors. The urban plan was designed by PieterVerhagen, influenced by H.P. Berlages monumental block andstreet models. Architecturally it used the entire city block as aunit of coherent design. The Sparta Football Club stadiumbecame the formal and social centre of this area. The resultwas a tight geometrical, symmetric composition of giganticblocks containing introverted workers housing.

Fortified And IsolatedThe social and cultural life in Spangen was programmedinside the building blocks, with schools, communal gardensand even the football pitch hidden behind the massive brickwalls. Spangen was isolated from the rest of the city by theSchie canal, the Mathenesserdike and especially by the longbend of the harbor train line, connecting the national railwaysystem to an enormous train yard next to the Meuse River,serving the new docks and factories. The fortified andisolated appearance of Spangen was exacerbated by the factthat, due to reasons of economy, it was decided not to raisethe ground above polder level, but to build on the existinglevels. As a consequence Spangen lies two to three meterslower than the surrounding housing areas.

A Unique And Important Architectural ArtifactSpangen is truly an architectural and urbanistic shrine tomaakbaarheid. It is the only prewar example of publiclyplanned and built social housing on this scale in Rotterdam; ithas a ruthless application of Berlagian urbanism, and acollection of severe and legendary housing blocks by theDutch pioneer of modernism, J.J.P. Oud. It also contains anarchitectural icon whose influence has spread over the worldsince the twenties when it was first published: the Justus vanEffenblock by Michiel Brinkman (1919). This block is the firstexample of communal workers housing, organized as astacking of little houses along a concrete raised pedestrianstreet, accessible by elevator. It is the seed that would spawna million high-rise flats for workers around the globe.

A Ruin Of Social Democracy?But: when the harbor started to move out of the city center,and employed less and less workers, Spangen lost much ofits economic reason of existence. Also the infrastructuralhardware that surrounded it and had given it its shape, lost itsmeaning. Spangen started to degenerate into an island ofunemployed, badly educated, isolated families. The only


SpangenTraindike

people voluntarily moving in were either poor immigrantfamilies or many, many drug dealers and junkies. Spangen,with its terribly renovated brick workers castles buried behindthe dikes, became no more than a ruin of the glory days ofsocial democracy in the nineteen twenties....

Still, Spangens fantastic location, its monumental form, itsstrong identity and the considerable civic pride it still inspires,are assets most Rotterdam neighborhoods would be proud topossess. Reinvention time?

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approach ofthe architects and the historical knowledge of the researchershave been synthesized into the following design brief.

- The abandoned traindike is the first limit to be crossed:make it accessible and attractive for the inhabitants ofSpangen by building a bridge over the water and astaircase up to the dike

- The buildings and public facilities on the other side of thedike have their backs towards the dike, and towardsSpangen: turn them around, make them visible andaccessible from Spangen using the dike, as icons of publiclife

- Reorganize the Vreelust area, that separates Spangen fromSchiedam, the highway, the metro station, theneighborhood of Oud Mathenesse and the industrial areaSpaanse Polder, into a positive urban space by intensifyingits current use and connecting it to Spangen. ThinkSpangen II

Coalition

Design: FAT architects

(London, UK) Sam Jacob

Project developer: Woonstad

Rotterdam Dominique

Strrmann, Rudie Hoogerland,

Leo van der Burg

Other participants: dS+V

Rik de Nooijer, local municipality

Rotterdam Delfshaven

Jos de Reus,

Creatief Beheer Rini Biemans



Historians

Spangen, 1905

Urban Plan for Spangen, P. Verhagen 1913

Spangen, 2009Spangen, 2009

Spangen, housing by J.J.P. Oud 1920 Spangen train dike, 1955


On top of the railway bridge New gateway to Spangen at Marconiplein

Connecting the swimming pool to the dike

Connecting the offices of Woonstad to the dike

A new pedestrian bridge and stairs from Spangen to the dike

Integrating the

metroline by

bigger

pillars

landscape

connection

raised

buildings

buildings

underneath

small

buildings

railway

arches

Urban tactics for the Vreelust area

A Summary Of RotterdamThe Waalhavenstrip in Rotterdam South overlaps the prewarworkers neighborhoods and the industrialized harbor of thetwentieth century. As such, it summarizes the possibilitiesand dilemmas of Rotterdam urban fabric.The area is old; along it runs the centuries old artery of theSchulpweg, once a dike connecting the tiny villages witheach other. Later it became the main street of theburgeoning nineteenth century housing neighborhoods. Afterthe polders flooded with workers housing, work began onwhat would become the largest harbor basin of Europe, theWaalhaven. Parallel to the Schulpweg a canal was dug out,then a new dike was built, then a train yard, then a wideavenue shared by cars, trucks, trains, cars and bicycles,then the quays and perpendicular to them the piers, then thebasin welcoming ever larger freight ships, grain elevators,riverboats etcetera.

Non-Human ScaleThis industrial complex, of a wholly non-human scale alreadyin the twenties, was nevertheless close to the small-scaleworkers neighborhoods. Spatially and economically theyexisted symbiotically. After the completion of the Waalhaven,the area thrived with its combination of freight and industry. The reconstruction after the Second World War introduceda new era in modernist town planning and the embrace ofthe harbor as the citys essence. From the forties onward agigantic system of parks was built in Rotterdam south,separating the pre war neighborhoods from the newmodernist garden cities. The park system was prolonged andstretched so as to connect visually and spatially to thewaterfront, creating a synthesis of green, water, housing,industry and freight in the so called window to the port, adeliberately designed interruption of buildings and piers,drawing the panorama of the harbor deep into the city.

Closed WindowThe window to the port can retroactively be seen as theswansong of the integral development and planning of the

harbor and the city. From the sixties and seventies onward,automization, containerization the oil crisis and other globalphenomena broke the dependence of the city on the harborand vice versa. This caused the harbor to move outward tothe west and the increasingly out of work neighborhoods towithdraw in themselves. Inadvertently symbolic was theclosing down of the window to the port in the seventies bybuilding apartment blocks right in the middle of it.

ReconnectAfter decades of symptomatic treatment of the poor and inertneighborhoods on one side of the dike, and also decades of athriving harbor area on the other side, it is now time to findways, reasons, sites, buildings and businesses to reconnectthese two worlds that offer each other such undiscoveredspatial and economic possibilities.

SynthesisThe agendas of the interested parties, the design approachof the architects and the historical knowledge of the areahave been synthesized into the following design brief.

- Develop an urban zone between the Waalhaven industrialarea and the neighborhood Charlois that mediates betweenthe architectural scale of the harbor and that of thepremodern city

- Propose typologies and public space interventions that canbe deployed in a piecemeal fashion and that can respondto the small scale social and cultural demands of theinhabitants of Charlois, as well as to the utilitarian demandsof the harbor related industries

- Translate the Skill City concept into a building that literallyand symbolically bridges the gap between city and harbor

- Connect the existing fragments of public space into anurban system that connects Charlois with the large-scaleelements that surround it: the harbor and the park


Waal-havenstrip

Coalition

Design: Maxwan Architects +

Urbanists (Rotterdam, NL)

Rients Dijkstra, Hiroki Matsuura,

Martijn Anhalt, with Arthur

Borejszo, Jason Hilgefort, Nara

Lee, Nobuki Ogasahara, Michiel

Raats, Harm te Velde

Project developer: Estrade

Projecten Sanna Schuiling

Other participants: Foundation

BAD Kamiel Verschuren,

Blauwhoed Project Development

Mark Kuijpers, dS+V Irma Bijl



Historians

Window on the Port, C. van Traa 1947

(Before) Waalhaven, 1900 Plan for Waalhaven, G..J. De Jongh 1907

Waalhaven, 1941 Waalhaven, 2009

Urban Harbour Factory

Employment Innovation Economic benefit Research Workshop Exhibition Community Center Education Gallery Labour Corporate Identity Harbour


OfficeProductionEducation

Economic impulse

Job creation

Local comunityFree zone

office

office

office

office + production 12,000 m2

1,200 m2 free zone

production

2-4 FL

1F

GL

1F

3,800 m2

1,000 m2

6,000 m2

Skill Building, hybrid office, factory, school and workshop building for harbour related industries and local inhabitants

A new park inbetween the Charlois neighborhood and the Waalhaven industrial area containing social, cultural and entrepreneurial programs

Reconnecting the city to the port through architecture,

public space, education and employment

Postbus 290663001 GB RotterdamThe Netherlands

t +31 (0)10 436 16 00f +31 (0)10 436 06 39

www.archfonds.nl

TextsCrimson Architectural HistoriansSpecial thanks to the IABR and to The Architectural Review forediting the introductory essay

Translation back pageBilly Nolan

Final editingAnneloes van der Leun

DesignManifesta, Rotterdam

PrintingGTV Oosterhout

No material from this publication maybe reproduced without the expresspermission of the makers.

Published by the NetherlandsArchitecture Fund, September 2009

It was not possible to find all the copyright holders of theillustrations used. Interestedparties are requested to contactthe Netherlands ArchitectureFund.

Crimson Architectural Historianswww.crimsonweb.org

International ArchitectureBiennale Rotterdamwww.iabr.nl

Design offices involved:

Maxwan Architects + Urbanistswww.maxwan.com

ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles]www.zus.cc

DaF Architectswww.dafarchitecten.nl

FAT Architectswww.fashionarchitecturetaste.com

Atelier Seraji Architects & Associeswww.seraji.net

Supported by:

The Fund subsidises design researchTwo examples are:

The Chinese DreamIn 2001 China announced it would build 400 new citieswithin the next 20 years. This ambition prompted NevilleMarsch and Adrian Hornsby to carry out multidisciplinaryresearch with the aim of formulating a coordinating visionof the process of urbanisation in China. In their study theymade use of the existing Dynamic Density Model todevelop growth scenarios for compact cities. DynamicDensity refers to the combination of two things: populationdensity and the amount of social interaction within thatpopulation. Strategic plans and concrete design proposalswere drawn up at different scale levels (national, regional,city, block, and individual). The results can be consultedthrough a website with a databank and forum. In addition,exhibitions and workshops were held in China in which theresearchers worked alongside Chinese students andprofessionals.The Chinese Dream was issued in 2008 by 010Publishers. With this extensive publication, Neville Marschand Adrian Hornsby hope to contribute to a positiveoutlook on urbanisation in China. Both the publication and the study were supported by the NetherlandsArchitecture Fund. www.dynamiccity.org


One Land, Two Systems Since 2004 the Netherlands Architecture Fund has financiallysupported various projects by the Foundation for AchievingSeamless Territory (FAST). FAST studied Israeli planningpolicy and the influence of socio-economic and politicalconflicts on physical planning and architecture, in particularthe role of physical planning in the oppression of thePalestinian people. FAST organised an international designcompetition for an alternative master plan for Ein Hud, one ofthe unrecognised Arabic villages in Israel where inhabitantslive without services and infrastructure. The competitionproposals were elaborated in a workshop on location,allowing the inhabitants of Ein Hud to become activelyinvolved in drawing up the final plan. Moreover, the localauthority became convinced to implement the master plan.The results of the study and the competition were madeknown in a newspaper distributed internationally to raiseawareness of the violations of human rights caused by theIsraeli governments physical planning policy. FAST iscurrently working on a publication about the role of physicalplanning in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in collaboration with010 Publishers (working title: The Atlas of the Conflict).www.one-land.org

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The Netherlands Architecture Fund implementsvarious contribution programmes aimed atdeveloping and exchanging knowledge concerningthe design disciplines and increasing interest inarchitecture, urban design, planning, landscapearchitecture, and interior architecture. Each year the Fund supports a large number ofnational and international unique and innovativeprojects. A total of 185 projects were supported in2008 for a total sum of over 4.5 million euro.A core task for the Fund is to promote professionalexcellence. Continuous development of the designdisciplines is a prerequisite for strengthening theposition of design in everyday practice andcontributing to high-quality spatial design at allscales. The Fund has therefore made it a top priorityto support innovative initiatives in this field. TheResearch and Design Grant Programme has been setup for research projects and project proposals. The

Lay-out newspaper makes public the results of designresearch carried out with the support of the Fund. A special programme for international projects focuseson the international profiling of Dutch architecture andurban design. In addition, the Fund aims to enhancethe international exchange of knowledge about spatialissues that are topical in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands Architecture Fund is one of thenational culture funds and is financed by fourministries: The Ministry of Education, Culture andScience; the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning andthe Environment; the Ministry of Agriculture, Natureand Food Quality, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.The Netherlands Architecture Fund is located inRotterdam, the Netherlands.

For more information check our website:www.archfonds.nl

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