Activating the “glass box“: The post-war International style office building’s contribution to the future densification challenges of the city centre of Rotterdam

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...

HAND_MADE: Architecture for craftsmanship

In the future, cities will face many challenges. We need to densify our cities while at the same time preserve qualities and identities on different scales. One of these identities is that of craftsmanship and the rich industrial history of Amsterdam. <br/>The separation between living and working is outdated, especially for the growing part of...

Relocating Rotterdam: The task of spatial planning and urban design throughout scales in the context of extreme flood risk scenarios in the Netherlands

The current notion of risk used in the Netherlands has a strong focus on reducing the probability that flooding occurs. It leaves little attention for reducing exposure and vulnerability, as the other components when defining risk. Socio-economic trends show that the areas below sea level will be only more densely inhabited with people and will...

All for one or ... one for all?

The housing estate of Nieuw Kattenburg is a Late-Modernist housing area consisting of many system-built slab buildings. This has been offering affordable housing and was built by the municipality of Amsterdam over fifty years ago. It is situated adjacent to the Amsterdam marine terrain which is now in the process of decommissioning and will be...