Cultivating Spatial Diversity: The Nieuwe Binnenweg Forum

Today, Rotterdam’s city is observed as a mosaic of diverse cultures representing various characters and atmospheres. Recently, the research ‘Coming to Terms with Superdiversity: The Case of Rotterdam’ gives a historical account of Rotterdam’s diversity since the 1600s to present day to try and understand how diversity formed and shifted within...

The Maassilo: in the Belly of the Beast: Verisimilitude

The Maassilo, an enormous concrete creature, a remnant of the prosperous growth of the Rotterdam harbour, lies unmoved and quenching for thirst on the bare and abandoned quay. Its identity intertwined with Rotterdam’s DNA and its presence is a pure display of structural power. As part of the studio Heritage + Architecture the project...

The reintroduction of katoenveem complex as an open infrastructure for contemporary culture

In 1920 the architect J. J. Kanters designed the warehouse ‘the Katoenveem’. The building is situated in the Merwe-Vierhavens of the port delta of Rotterdam. It was constructed as a part of the infrastructure that relied on the import and export of Cotton. The position of the Katoenveem in this transit system divines the character of the...

The Maassilo towards a machine for exchange of culture: Working as a link between users, local and international culture

Between 1850 and 1900, the city of Rotterdam transformed into an international harbour city. In the twentieth century, the harbour rapidly grew larger to being the largest harbour in the world for over forty years. The first part of the Maassilo was built in the beginning of the twentieth century. As the harbour grew larger, the Maassilo...

In the Minds of People: Port-City Perspectives, The Case of Rotterdam

Following the geographical ‘Any-Port Model’, urban design has stipulated and enforced the disunion of port and city over the recent decades. In conjunction with other disciplines, the emphasis has laid at dislocation of production activities in favor of logistic-productive dynamics. At the same time, professional focus was on the urban areas...

Talent Lab Tarwewijk: The exploration of a new typology for experience based education, in order to unlock the talents of Tarwewijk.

Living in Rotterdam, we make eagerly use of all cultural attractions the city has to offer. We visit a museum on a free weekend, go to the library to study, spend an evening at the cinema or theatre and go out for dinner with friends and family. Without much awareness, using the cultural infrastructure of the city engages us in informal learning...

Designing the Middellandstraat Food Journey: An initiative to revitalize a multicultural shopping street

The project is an initiative to revitalize a multicultural shopping street in Rotterdam, called Middellandstraat. The design question was how to support the shops to attract more visitors to the shopping street through the food diversity. Investigations into the visitors' experience in the street, the context, and market research were done to...

Public Building / Public Realm, composition & tectonics - Project title: The vitality of networks

These documents contain the work of Peter van Gelder and his collaborators.

Rotterdam: Dynamic Polder City = Land + Water + Culture

The planning culture in the Netherlands is based on the experience of building cities on very wet and soft soils. The design of Dutch polder cities was from early on a balance between land and water: building site preparation. The relation between technological development and urban development can be ordered in six phases: natural (-1000),...