Left-over spaces within the city present problems on various scales and mediums. While these left-over spaces, named as Urban cracks, are necessary for the city’s structure, they hold untapped potential. This project aims to systematically identify, analyze, uncover, and activate these spaces in Rotterdam, specifically in the Brandgrens area. The objective is to define them as “0th places,” where the space functions as a regulated yet adaptable zone to host site-specific activities and remains flexible to allow for change.
The Brandgrens area was chosen due to its significant history, particularly after the World War II bombings, where new developments emerged adjacent to the old urban fabric. This pattern can occur in any city, as new developments continuously create new urban cracks.
The methods used included Research by Design, Critical Mapping, Fieldwork, Data Mining, Morphological Analysis, Modeling, and Literature Review. The results produced an analytical framework to identify these spaces within the city, understand their various relationships (a map of opportunities), and develop a final detailed design showing different scenarios and a city-scale strategy to extend the intervention’s effects.
The conclusion is that these spaces can indicate problems in their surroundings, if not within themselves. They require further study from different perspectives and approaches to bridge the gap between urbanism and architecture and to enable people to reclaim their space. While the project can be applied globally, the differences in urban fabrics, functions, cultures, social groups, environments, and economic situations mean that urban cracks, their potential, and their necessity will vary. The exploratory approach in this project allows for flexibility in addressing the ambiguities related to urban cracks in different contexts.

The energy industry is responsible for almost 89% of GHG emissions (IEA, 2022), and projected CO2 emissions would exceed the 1.5°C goal (IPCC,2023). There is no question that we need to transition towards renewable energy sources, it has become an urgency and we need to transition now.

However, there are several challenges within this energy transition. Renewable energy sources require better spatial planning in terms of land-use. Its production and the stability of energy systems require reliable and resilient geopolitical relationships. It is also a challenge to ensure affordability and accessibility of renewable energy, as well as the acceptance of the transition towards renewables. We have to tackle all these challenges while involving nature as an actor.

We aim to achieve a just and resilient energy transition by 2050. This means creating secured geopolitical relationships, ensuring affordable, accessible and fair distributed energy and regenerating ecology in the process. These goals are divided into three main pillars: Geopolitics, Social aspects and Ecology. With circular economy as one of our theoretic frameworks combined with our pillars, we create a conceptual framework. In this report we made use of other theoretic frameworks like resilience, spatial and social justice, the pattern language and panarchy theory.

Spatial analysis and literature research have concluded in several strategies to ensure a just and resilient energy transition. We zoomed into the region of and between Rotterdam and Ruhr-area. On this scale we determined areas of specialised and generalised production; inter-connection of energy production landscape and expanded protected nature areas; mixed land-use of energy production, agriculture, the urban fabric and natural areas. On a local scale we explained two different systems of rural decentralised energy systems with a bottom-up approach.

The ‘Power of justice’ aims for a future that is resilient and just because of strong geopolitical relationships and an improved energy grid. We not only consider present life but also the future of human and non-human generations.