Category Archives: Architecture

Rotterdam CS – as long as it lasts

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For years now the Rotterdam Central Station area is under construction. First, during demolishing of the old post-war style entrance and underground construction works for the metro link, the process was not very visible. Now things are moving fast. Not only is the main terminal approaching it’s final shape and extent above ground, there has also been very efficient communication with users and residents about the project: billboards with rendered images have been put up, interactive panorama images and time lapse films of  the construction process have been published on-line, and guided tours are being organized on the site.

The new Rotterdam CS will be a multi modal transit terminal, connecting high speed and intercity rail to local light rail, trams, buses and metro lines. Today, the station receives 110.000 passengers. With the new rail connections and growing mobility in the region, the amount of passengers in 2025 is estimated at 323.000 per day. In the 1990’s, the project was commissioned to British architect Will Alsop. His design, soon associated with ‘ champagne glasses’, turned out to be politically and economically unfeasible and was abandoned. After this attempt, Dutch architects Benthem & Crouwel were invited for the assignment. Their office is responsible for 4 other large railway stations in the Netherlands: Amsterdam CS, Utrecht CS, The Hague CS and Schiphol Plaza (Amsterdam airport). Alsop, by the way, still got the opportunity to develop a colorful building just in front of the station. In 2008, the old Rotterdam CS was demolished, soon the old bicycle and pedestrian tunnel will be demolished too. In 2013 the new terminal will be inaugurated, and in 2014 also the adjacent Kruisplein underground parking garage and square. The new canopy over the platforms will have a glass roof with embedded photovoltaic cells. The main concourse has an incredibly large span and reaches almost until the Weena avenue. A new passageway underneath the tracks is being built of almost 50m wide, including shops on both sides.

Old and new station entrance (under construction)

Construction of the Calypso building, by Alsop

Old and new platform canopy (left), and the temporary station building (right)

Interactive panorama, click to switch between various points in time

Time lapse movie of demolishing and building part of the station

Visit Rotterdam CS in Google Maps

Lecture: the Atlanta Beltline

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Thursday October 6, the Deltametropolis Association and the Department of Spatial Planning (TUDelft) organize a lecture by Ryan Gravel, on Transit Oriented Development (TOD). As urban planner he is responsible for the development of the Atlanta Beltline, a new light rail connection on an abandoned cargo track around the city. The project emerged bottom-up with help of local stakeholders. The lecture is part of our project SprintCity.

Time and Location
9:45 – 11:30h | Delft University of Technology, faculty of Architecture, Julianalaan 134, Delft – Berlagezaal 1 (ground floor) | Free admission

Debate panel
– Ryan Gravel (Perkins+Will)
– Caroline Bos (UNStudio)
– Dominic Stead (OTB)
– Paul Gerretsen (Deltametropolis Association)
– Roberto Rocco (TUDelft)

Click here to read more and register for the lecture.

Read more on the Atlanta Beltline

Retirement cities

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September 2011, Susana Alves and Merten Nefs will present a paper at Environment 2.0, a conference organized by Technical University Eindhoven. The paper discusses the possibilities for Shrinking Cities to attract elderly by spatial features and services and transform their economy to focus on leisure and health care – in other words, to become successful Retirement Cities.


Retirement Cities – Analysing the opportunities and challenges of a co-existence of ageing and urban shrinkage in Europe

Authors:
Merten Nefs (Deltametropolis Association, Rotterdam)
Susana Alves (Edinburgh College of Art; OPENspace Research Centre)
Ingo Zasada (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research Institute of Socio-Economics, Müncheberg)
Dagmar Haase (Humboldt University Berlin and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig)

ABSTRACT
Urban shrinkage has been acknowledged a major trend in many urban regions across Europe and elsewhere. Increasingly, policy makers and planners have been developing strategies to cope with these new urban development paths and their socio-spatial consequences. The authors advance the idea that active retirement migration and health tourism can be part of such strategies and ask the question: What are opportunities but also challenges for retirement migration in shrinking European cities? The authors, all from different disciplines and countries, share the idea that retirement migration and urban shrinkage in Europe are connected, bound together by the search for urban ‘quality of life’. Both processes have already been discussed extensively as separate subjects in academic literature. However, in this paper a conceptual model is proposed, which provides an approach of how to assess the suitability and identify development perspectives of shrinking cities in the context of an aging society and the in-migration of retirees. Based on two carefully selected case study regions with particular relevance of aging population – Walcheren (NL) and Leipzig (GER) – the conceptual model is exemplarily applied to investigate both quantity and quality of green open spaces and living environment, a major aspect in urban quality of life. It is argued, that shrinking cities provide valuable opportunities to adapt to the affordances of an aging population. Retirement in-migration again might represent a crucial catalyst in urban renewal for shrinking cities.

Walcheren – retirement at the North Sea coast, in a region facing shrinkage

 

Leipzig – reuse of urban green space in a shrunken city, for recreational use and active ageing

Lecture: Bernd Fesel on cultural clusters

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tIP lecture #1: Bernd Fesel on cultural clusters
TU Delft, department of Urbanism and Association Deltametropool invite you to the International Perspectives: Cultural Clusters. A lecture by Bernd Fesel on the creative economy and Randstad Holland on Thursday September 22, 2011.
Bernd Fesel is the assistant director of the European centre for Creative Economy and was the main advisor Creative Industries for the European Capital of Culture, Ruhr 2010.
For all the cities of Randstad Holland, the creative industry is an important focus. The competition between cities within Randstad Holland (RSH) implies that RSH is disregarding that the real opponents for attracting creative entrepreneurs in North-West Europe are cities like London or Paris.

Three questions to be answered:
– Could combining the efforts of the various cities to the RSH region scale improve the international attractiveness of Randstad Holland? And if so, how can cultural clusters in the various cities support this international perspective?
– How can culture clusters and economic activity strenghten each another?
– What lessons are learned form the European Capital of Culture, Ruhr 2010?

For more info and registration, click here.

Riots and the built environment

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The Architects’ Journal (AJ) asked several architects and theorists to comment on the UK riots of the last couple of weeks. Do riots occur because of failing spatial configurations, or is the built environment of our cities only the result of social processes and conflicts. Is it worth spending on urban regeneration and what role does gentrification play in riots of young citizens without hope for a better future?

Click here to read the full article
Riots updated: Sennett, Rykwert, Till, de Botton, Tavernor and more on why Britain is burning
12 August, 2011 | By Christine Murray

Comments are made by Joseph Rykwert, Richard Sennett, Jeremy Till, Alain de Botton, Wouter van Stiphout  etc.