The transformation of coffee warehouse Santos, Katendrecht, Rotterdam

Abstract

The report before you is a documentation of the graduation studio Harbour heritage of the Master of science Architecture, Urbanism & Building Sciences at the Technical Unversity in Delft, the Netherlands. Inside the master course a specialisation within this field is chosen. Herritage & Architectural Design is a study direction that is focused on handling existing buildings within their technical, cultural and historic context. The current architecture climate in the world is increasingly confronted with an expanding number of jobs with a ‘renovational’ character. Also the definition of valuable heritage is broadening and the view on cultural-, historical- and architectural-herritage is continiouslychanging. This rapidly growing field requires specialized knowledge and skills to cope with these ‘one of a kind’ assignments wich require a ‘tailored made’ approach. It touches upon specific fields like historical research, architectural theories, building technology, the field of conservation and architecture. Not only to be able to conserve and honor the historic remnants that brought us to this point in time but also to give it new meaning by letting it contribute to the architectural discourse of today. The goal of this graduation project is to get well-prepared for this exiting future. This will be done by simulating a currently existing design assignment so it takes place in a realistic setting in regards to the proposed design’s financial-, structural-, ergonomical-, climatologic- and durability aspects and so on. This assignment will be analysed from a large urban scale to ultimatly the scope of a detail. Because this assignment is done inside the master course of Heritage& Design also layers of time will be analysed by assessing the history of the building and area. Chosen for this assignment is the nationally listed warehouse of ‘Santos’(fig 1.21) wich is one of the remaining vacant historical/cultural/ architectural valuable buildings in the harbour area’s of Rotterdam. Located on ‘the pols of Katendrecht’ (fig1.11) it resides in an area on the brink of a large re-development plan led by the municipality. This creates a complex design assignment to develop a proposition to prolongate the warehouse life-span within a rapidly changing context. The goal is to nderstand the value and meaning the building represents to be able to preserve its historical function and use it to enrich the future plans of the municipality of Rotterdam. The reason for choosing ‘Santos’ amongst other warehouses available for this graduation course is multi-faceted: During my student years I lived in Rotterdam and I know how little historic fabric is left compared to other big cities in the Netherlands. Especially rare are historic building assignments wich were designed in ‘classical’ style. Because of this rarity and placement in a modern metropolis I find this an interesting architectural challenge in wich I would like to develop a possible solution. Next to my architectureal interest, ‘Santos’ also appealed to my love for history and technology. These two topics combined tell me stories of the evolution of human endeavours. These are entertaining stories but they also give our current time a context in wich it can be understood better. The warehouse of Santos has a rich history and was build technologically advanced during the time it was built. For this reason i find the ‘Santos’ assignment a great challenge in the preservation of this history wich i would like to find a suitable answer for.