Archiprix International 2001
Aarhus School of Architecture, - Aarhus, Denmark
Adam Collaitz Kurdahl
Tutors: Nils Madsen, Minna Riska, Johannes Pedersen, Lars Krogh Hansen
At the start of the new millennium, European cities have been packed and reinvented almost beyond their limits. Any large-scale urban developments are doomed to take place at industrial sites or now-redundant harbour locations. New high-speed train lines provide a unique chance for the development of a new urbanism. The shift in the time/space relationship creates a 'black hole urbanism': new infrastructure-based power centres will absorb, consume, and generate developments with densities previously unimaginable in European minds. Within one commuting hour, Rotterdam will have a virtual population of 12 million people. In a collective rather than competitive effort, each entity in the Randstad is typecast. Rotterdam is the only remaining serious economic development location. Rotterdam Central Station (RCS) will have unique branding possibilities: a direct link to the national highway system, no height restrictions, the city centre, the world’s biggest port, an existing A-class office location. It has (consumer) culture, a high-speed train stop. At present, the station area, overcrowded with mediocre commercial facilities and an amalgam of infrastructural emergencies, is in immediate need of redesign. A development on the scale now imagined will give Rotterdam an economic and social quantum leap, but it would be nonsense to believe that it could fit seamlessly into the city. The new programme is not born out of Rotterdam, it arrived by train. The development is not based on an existing economy - it will create one. Each action will evoke more than itself. Inherent in the programme is the danger of clusters of offices creating empty streets by five and entertainment clusters with no activity before five. However, this danger may also be the strength of the programme. Equal amounts of programme before and after five can guarantee an overall programmatic mixture, producing a 24-hour economy/ city. Parking is the only consistent programme component. Double use of parking facilities generates huge savings in construction costs and benefits in ground exploitation: parking as a generic design element guaranteeing programmatic mixing. The area will be a highly commercialized zone dependent on huge amount of visitors. As in the creation of a shopping mall, the first thing to secure will be the cornerstones. Each part of the plan will have its big crowd-pulling programmes. First major attractors are the station itself and the related parking facilities. FIRST PHASE The development will start with the construction of a 3000-bay car park necessary to serve the high-speed train. Different parties will invest in the construction, each using the parking area to their own benefit. Floating above the tracks, a solution of one to two-storey trusses in the car park is proposed, allowing for the creation of a new datum in the city. Free from anxiety, the datum is used to control the development, securing a plan functioning in its minimum condition. The traffic hub is the epicentre of people and movement. By broadening the existing tunnel under the station, a public street is created, connecting the north and south of the city. At the point where the Lijnbaan (shopping street) coincides with the datum, a collision of programmatic layers and infrastructures creates a new open-air ‘fold’ mall. Connecting the Hub and the Fold Mall, the datum is intersected, bent, and cut by programmes generating internal and external routes and programme scenarios (ADJACENCIES). For example: station - red light - religious (war) zone - club zone - fitness – Nike Town - Fold Mall - Lijnbaan. The existing PTT building will remain, converted into a cultural mastodon, a living and working art community centre. SECOND PHASE Street, parking, and the panoramic restaurant are stacked to make a G-string connection over the Schiekade Street to the eastern part of the area. Reaching across to the Blaak Market, this area takes on a new and attractive position in the city, opening possibilities for large-scale programmes such as Cineplex and Sega World. Exploring incredible depths, black boxes are free-floating in a rigid parking structure permitting single-sided offices to exist on the exterior. Compression of the roofscape allows the internal loop to submerge, and provides a lobby and a drop-off for the towers above and the entertainment centre below. THIRD PHASE The area west of the hub borders the psychological edge of Rotterdam ('s-Gravendijkwal), the city frontier. Less transitional movements give the highest degree of mass in the plan. A residential and office neighbourhood, perched above the parking datum, is created between existing relatively large-scale developments. By cutting, compressing, expanding, and spanning the mass, each unit is given a specific character in terms of view, light, position, adjacency, and accessibility.