Repurposing the port

Abstract

Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have played, and continue to play, a dominant role in global energy systems, and thereby in the social, economic and technological developments worldwide. Unfortunately, these energy sources have their negative side-effects: local air pollution and global CO2-emission. The latter has never been this high, resulting in an extra, more negative, important role for fossil fuels: in global warming. Not to mention that these fossil sources of energy are depletable resources; once we’ll be running out of them. The project ‘Repurposing the Port’ combines this issue with the challenge of port-cities to house the expected growth in number of citizens, reach their climate goals ánd bring back the former intimate connection of the city and the port. In this project the Petroleumhaven in Amsterdam, symbolically being the first port outside the city and the first fossil fuel-specialized port, is transformed to a future-proof, mixed-use neighborhood. In this transformation both the existing structure of the area, and the available building structures (and materials) are reused to make it a fully circular redevelopment. The flexible wooden building system provides for a community-driven realization and on top of that for a carbon-negative footprint of the project. To do so, the aboveground steel storage tanks (AST's) in the area are analyzed in the research paper, and used as the main starting point for the design project.