Activating the “glass box“

Abstract

The project “Activating the glass box” aims to find out how the existing built heritage can be not an obstacle, but the key to the comprehensive dense city of the near future. It showcases the contextual design approach and opportunities for the unlisted 50’s-60’s international style office buildings - “glass boxes”- whose potential is not yet widely seen today, especially in the context of densification. The project puts a focus on a building’s adaptability for different future uses as a resilient solution to urban densification.

The vacant former police office building at Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam has become a testing ground to find guidelines for dealing with an existing building and reviving it for as long as possible.

This project is a part of the Adapting 20th century heritage studio that deals with vacant police buildings in the Netherlands. The police want to adapt their real estate to the new organization and the changed structure of the services, with larger teams, in fewer places, and more digital presence. This reorientation to denser locations is also taking place outside of police institutions on a larger scale, both nationally and globally. It is estimated that by 2050 nearly 7 out of 10 people in the world will live in cities. Denser construction reduces transit emissions by adding more stories and provides more livable and usable area in the same amount of space.

With my research, I was looking for ways this site could contribute to the future challenges of densification in central Rotterdam. There are 4 scales of impact this building could have: urban, architectural/heritage, social, and technical. The strategy of each scale developed for this building is an outcome of the research.

On the urban scale, the building is to become a landmark for the street and have an active and inviting plinth. Regarding the architectural/heritage scale, the majority of the original building is reused, recreating the original lobby, and a new extension on top is introduced. New functions - restaurant, cooking school, shop, urban farm, co-living and roof terrace with rentable bar for celebrations - will have a positive socio-cultural impact, providing locals with fresh food, education, job opportunities and making the neighbourhood more inclusive. Adaptability for different uses over time will be introduced on the technical scale by implementing Open Building principles and introducing new, more spacious, vertical circulation cores in the places of the existing ones. The project’s flexibility limits were tested. For this reason, four subjects were looked at in more depth: program, storey height & installations, raised floor and the facade, yielding interesting findings.

To conlcude, this adaptive reuse project introduces the abovementioned solutions as a strategy that addresses impact on the urban, architectural/heritage, social, and technical scales. The design’s goal is to activate the building, guaranteeing its long lifespan by re-connecting it with the street, introducing environmentally and socially impactful program, establishing an architectural landmark, all while implementing adaptability for different future uses.