Liquid City: A Radical New Masterplan in Rotterdam Embraces the River for Resilience
CategoriesArchitecture

Liquid City: A Radical New Masterplan in Rotterdam Embraces the River for Resilience

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Popular with hip foodies and craft beer lovers, Fenix Food Factory’s generous outdoor seating area overlooks Rijnhaven. An old industrial harbor, over decades, it has seen shipping disappear under the boot of urban development.

After docklands moved west towards, and now into, the North Sea, a new district has sprung up in this corner of Rotterdam, extending the city center. Shops, residential blocks, floating structures housing offices and hospitality have replaced redundant warehouses and cranes.

The stunning Hotel New York overlooks all of this new development. The iconic building dates to the late-19th century, when it housed Holland America’s headquarters. The ocean liner route to Hoboken, New Jersey, carried close to 500,000 passengers from mainland Europe in its first twenty-five years of operation, and some will be immortalized when the FENIX Museum of Migration opens in 2024.

At the closed end of the quay, early signs of Rijnhavenpark are materializing — if you know what to look for. A large section of the harbor is cordoned off with buoys, and machinery has arrived to start the mammoth task of filling in one-third of the basin to create a huge public park, partly built on dry land, part floating on water, connected by walkways. The scheme is just one of several remarkable undertakings by the municipality of Rotterdam, transforming how the city interacts with its riverfront.

City Projects Rotterdam Rijnhaven

Rijnhaven, Rotterdam by Ossip van Duivenbode/Rotterdam Partners

 

Artist’s impression of Rijnhavenpark by City Projects/Rotterdam Partners

A delta town, the surrounding region of the Netherlands is home to the huge Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, and has seen vast amounts spent on flood defences as a result. Known as Delta Works, modern protective infrastructure first broke ground in 1954 and construction only finished around 1997. Rotterdam’s Maeslantkering was one of the final pieces in a jigsaw of sluices, locks and dams. An enormous floodgate that took six years to build, it remains one of the planet’s largest moving structures.

A new masterplan comprising a series of large scale City Projects for central Rotterdam, many of which actively embrace the river itself, serves as a clear reminder of how vulnerable a city is when large parts lie below sea level — however, it also serves as a source of inspiration for design ingenuity. This scheme includes planting flora at different tidal levels, meaning that green spaces change with the time of day and actively supporting aquatic life, mammals and birds in the process.

In total, eight sites have been approved, but the initial series could be the start of something far bigger — a vast ‘central park’ running down both river banks. This vision was creatively displayed on the inside of a disused shipping barge during June’s Rotterdam Architecture Month for the Liquid City exhibition. Should that ever materialize, the network of green waterfronts would line downtown and a good chunk of the former docklands that made up Europe’s largest port.

Interconnected green spaces are shown on the banks of the Meuse at Rotterdam Architecture Month by Martin Guttridge-Hewitt

“Four and a half years ago the decision was made that we need more green, and a lot more. Not just around the Meuse, but everywhere. Of course you can’t do it everywhere. So we were told there would be eight locations in the city centre, and to go away, do some homework quickly as possible, and present a study, with numbers for what it might cost,” explains Emiel Arends, urban planning specialist on City Projects who also works as part of Rotterdam’s climate adaptation programme, WeerWoord [Weatherwise]. “We only had four months to prepare, pitched it, they said OK, here’s €350 million ($387 million), go make it happen as soon as possible.”

In addition to riverside sites, City Projects also include the elevated Hofbogenpark, a narrow 1 mile (2 kilometer) micro-intervention on a former railway viaduct, and Hofplein, where urban greening will transform an already-busy square. Arends’ colleague, Pieter de Greef, senior planner and a key architect of the river-as-park masterplan, says the biggest challenge is Nelson Mendelapark. In partnership with US waterfront specialist SWA/Balsley, work has begun on an area the size of ten soccer fields at Maashaven harbour. Once complete, this will comprise hills, trees, lawns, an event space, and various tidal features, including a pathway designed to help people understand the river’s natural flow and ecosystem.

City Projects Rotterdam Nelson Mandelapark

Artists impression of Nelson Mandelapark by SWA/Balsley

“If you want square meters, Tidal Park Feyenoord is bigger. But that’s all about biodiversity, greening rivers, giving nature new places in the city… it’s not for picnics and other activities,” says de Greef of the largest approved City Projects development. “Mandelapark is much more mixed. There’s a lot of social housing around there, which is good but they do not have many balconies or public spaces. The streets are narrow, filled with asphalt and stones. This project gives 16,000 households a large green space within 10 minutes walk.”

Unsurprisingly, considering the neighborhood’s urgent needs, de Greef says the most significant achievement with Nelson Mandelapark has been keeping all available land public. Other schemes in City Projects have integrated private interests to help finance. For example, at Rijnhavenpark three large residential blocks will deliver 4,500 homes, bringing in revenue to realise the vision. Elsewhere, water companies support schemes where green-blue infrastructure can ease pressure on overloaded drainage systems.

“Each part of the City Projects has a slightly different focus,” says Arends. “So within the inner city, on the north side, a little bit further away from the river, it’s about water storage and heat reduction. Tidal Park Feyenoord is all about biodiversity, but you can walk there as well. There are actions specific to each of the parks. It’s an insane programme. I’ve never seen this before, in any city.”

Hero Image: Rotterdam’s Maeslantkering flood defences by Guido Pijper / Rotterdam Partners

Architizer is thrilled to announce the winners of the 11th Annual A+Awards! Interested in participating next season? Sign up for key information about the 12th Annual A+Awards, set to launch this fall.

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“Architects need to embrace radical change to avoid a hellish future”
CategoriesSustainable News

“Architects need to embrace radical change to avoid a hellish future”

As yet another COP fails to put the world on a path to avert climate catastrophe, it’s time for architects to fundamentally rethink the work they do, writes Michael Pawlyn.


The outcome of COP27, and Antonio Guterres’ grim warning that “we are on a highway to climate hell”, requires us as designers to do some serious thinking about what we do next. Aside from the breakthrough on “loss and damage” payments to the countries most affected (generally the poorest and least responsible for the problem) there was virtually no progress in getting the world on-track for a safe future. It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge, but the more courageous thing to do is to engage in an urgent debate about how change happens – and then to take radical action accordingly.

It may also be tempting to think that we can carry on broadly as normal and try a bit harder at sustainability, but that would be a disastrous course of action. We need to accept that the degree of change required is far greater than the industry has embraced to date.

There was virtually no progress in getting the world on-track for a safe future

We urgently need to transcend conventional sustainability approaches to pursue regenerative solutions that are net-positive rather than simply mitigating negatives. We need to move from mechanistic approaches towards more systemic approaches and to widen our perspectives from being solely human-focussed to recognising the whole web of life on which we depend. In short: architects need to embrace radical change if we are to avoid the hellish future predicted by Guterres.

Change needs to occur at the level of mindsets. This has been the focus for Architects Declare UK, in the way the declaration points were written, the events we have organised and the practice guide that was produced. The source of inspiration has been the systems thinker Donella Meadows, who asserted that the best way to change a system is by intervening at the level of the mindset, or paradigm that drives the system, and by shifting its goals.

If we ask ourselves “what drives the way architects work?” it’s probably fair to say that it’s a mixture of worthy aims, such as transforming the built environment to enhance people’s lives, as well as less comfortable motivations, such as the glory gained from publicity or completing a project. Younger, and future, generations are likely to judge harshly those who are motivated by the latter and some of the big-name architects who would like to think of themselves as avant-garde are at risk of being on the wrong side of history.

If, as many have argued over the years, architecture is a celebration of the age in which it was created, then a good test of its relevance is to consider how a contemporary work will be considered in, say, 20 years. Buildings that are little more than gimmicky manipulations of form that help a developer make more money, or extravagant showpieces paid for by luxury brands are likely to be regarded by future generations as some of the most trivial and morally detached artifacts ever created.

Big-name architects who like to think of themselves as avant-garde are at risk of being on the wrong side of history

Societal norms like democracy and human rights are coming under increasing threat and it is worth contemplating how an informed teenager would regard architects who seem content to be photographed with genocidal leaders or those who design projects for murderous autocrats. If we want to be “Good Ancestors”, to use Roman Krznaric‘s term (in turn, borrowed from Louis Kahn’s client Jonas Salk), we need to think much more consciously about how we spend our limited lifespans and how we will be remembered over longer timescales.

An urge to create monuments or icons has been a significant driver for (mainly male) architects and that now needs to be challenged. Ever since the first skyscrapers, we have fetishised supertall buildings and continually competed to go ever taller. A growing body of evidence is showing that this is an extremely profligate way of building; both in terms of embodied and operational carbon.

Surely, in a planetary emergency we should be competing to design buildings that are best aligned with long-term planetary health? Earlier this year Architects Declare UK wrote an open letter to the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats (CTBUH) in which we proposed that it was time to transform its register of “The World’s Tallest Building”. We called on the CTBUH to shift its focus from a fixation on height to the other part of its mission: Urban Habitats. As an organisation they have done a lot to promote sustainability and now there is an opportunity for them to engage with regenerative thinking.

As a profession, we risk being left behind by other sectors that are embracing change more rapidly. Many large businesses are now accepting that the pursuit of profit is not a sufficiently inspiring purpose to attract the best staff and are defining bold new purposes. Similarly, many institutions are recognising that their original purposes are in need of updating. The 1828 Royal Charter for the Institute of Civil Engineers declared that civil engineering “is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man”.

We risk being left behind by other sectors that are embracing change more rapidly

Architects Declare UK has written to the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Simon Allford, proposing that its mission statement should be updated to align with the planetary emergency. Whether he chooses to make this part of his legacy remains to be seen.

It is encouraging to see that some awards such as the Pritzker Architecture Prize are moving with the times, choosing to celebrate architects who champion retrofit, those who work with low-energy materials and, recognising a more diverse range of architects than was conventionally the case. There are, however, plenty of awards systems that still reward highly damaging approaches, as Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) have argued in connection with the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Ideally, this mindset change would be shared by governments. After two years of requesting, and being refused, a meeting with the UK prime minister or former energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng (during which time it was revealed that ministers from his department held hundreds of meetings with fossil fuel companies), Architects Declare UK recently met with shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband and engaged in a constructive dialogue about systems change.

There are, of course, limits to our agency as architects and designers, but it’s no longer acceptable to claim that our existing limits are the end of the story. Where change is necessary, and exceeds what’s possible for an individual company, we need to collaborate to drive systems change. This means joining groups like Architects Declare, Design Declares, Architects Climate Action Network – wherever you feel most at home – and working together to drive change.

Michael Pawlyn is founder of Exploration Architecture. He is the co-author, with Sarah Ichioka, of Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency published by Triarchy Press, and the co-host of the Flourish Systems Change podcast. He is a co-initiator and Steering Group member of UK Architects Declare.

The top image is by Verstappen Photography via Unsplash.

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