Hedwig van der Linden
Veldacademie
Expeditie Rotterdam - Or the revival of the hidden Reconstruction City
'Expeditie Rotterdam’ is a critical revision of the post-war inner city perimeter block. The specific inner block structure consisting of hidden streets exclusively for delivery, embodies the modernist’s car ideology. After 66 years these ‘expeditiehoven’ are heavily underused and depraved. At the same time the booming city of Rotterdam is looking for opportunities to densify and intensify.
In the design proposal typology is a key bridging and anchoring the original ‘layered infrastructure’ concept and the new ‘urban living’ identity. Backroads are transformed into qualitative courtyards. A deck, residential towers and their materialization in glass and steel refer to and renew the modernist vocabulary and ideas. To arrive here, meticulous preliminary studies were carried out concerning notions of density, socio-environmental field work, morphology and post-war architecture.
This project reveals a future scenario that individual stakeholders cannot imagine; it could help to solve clashes of interest and be a catalyst in urban development.