Places for Freedom

Abstract

The research and graduation project are about the revalue of unfinished, abandoned landscapes through architectural structures. Nowadays it is almost rare to find places and landscapes in cities that have no function, are left behind or not taken care of. Even in the city of Rotterdam, which is less dense than Amsterdam, every square meter is very valuable and is often planned for. If it does not have a destination yet, then developers are eager to make that piece of land profitable. This capitalistic view is characteristic for our productive, accelerated and consumptive society. In this society, we tend to forget the small, but valuable things in life and stray away from our core, our existential self, which is that we are part of nature. We tend to neglect the need for spaces for reflection and being in our continuous drive for moving forward. The city needs these breathing spaces where, for a moment, the citizen is not a passive consumer, but an active and playful participant, a wanderer, a collector and an explorer in these ‘Places for Freedom’.

Preliminary to the design a research was done on the unfinished, abandoned landscapes of Rotterdam: places in the city that lost their formal use, are left behind and often taken over by nature. Those places fascinated me as they actually oppose the productive and planned city and the effects thereof. In order to find the proper methods to explore and close read those places, a study was done in psychogeography. Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and ‘drifting’ to find unexpected perspectives and therefore can create new awareness of places. Walking, the merit of wandering, as the main act of the research for encountering those places, means slowing down which allows close reading of space, remembrance and let in the invisible sensory experience. Furthermore, the methods photographing, drawing and writing were used to document, represent and make them legible for others. It allowed me to perceive the specific qualities of the observed places and lead to a categorization of different types of unfinished landscapes found in Rotterdam. For the design proposal, the three typical unfinished landscapes of Rotterdam are being exposed: the wasteland in the city, the in-between landscape and the industrial landscape.

With the design ‘Places for Freedom’ I create architectural structures inside those chosen unfinished landscapes to offer an alternative way of being in and thinking about the city. These structures are inviting one to be present in the moment and provides a sensory experience of a place, they are enhancing the specific qualities of each landscape. ‘Places for Freedom’ offers a break in our routinized journeys within the city, a closer relationship with our natural environment and moments for intimate informal encounters, not only with humans, but also with animals and plants which are the other inhabitants of the city.