The book is the result of the course ‘City of Innovations Project’ at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, led by the group of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture. ‘Transit stations: sub-centres in Rotterdam Zuid’ is the theme of the course running in spring 2022. It is connected to the research project Walk-In (acronym of Widening sustAinable mobiLity networKs: Impact on Nodes) financed by NWO and part of the KIEM GoCi program. Students presented their research and design scenarios to the project partners in April 2022 and they learned from their expertise throughout the course. Those are the City of Rotterdam, Delta Metropool Association, De Zwarte Hond, PosadMaxwan, Mecanoo, Bureau Spoorbouwmeester, I&M, Prorail with the collaboration of the University of Gustave Eiffel. By doing so, students contributed to the objective of Walk-In: to investigate the potential of suburban stations in transition in the context of the low car inner city of Rotterdam and to develop generic guidelines and spatial solutions for the integration of sustainable mobility with public space and mixed urban functions and services.

Due to the growing demand for mobility (as a primary need for people to get to work, to obtain personal care or to go travelling), cities continue to be faced with new urban challenges. Stations represent, along mobility networks, not only transportation nodes (transfer points) but also architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and which have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the ‘compact city’ the station is simply no longer the space to access mobility networks, as informed by their dry pragmatism, but becomes an urban place of sociality and encounter - an extended public space beyond mobility itself. Which relationships and cross-fertilizations can be significant for the design of the future living stations in the Municipality of Rotterdam? How ought these stations to be conceived in order to act as public places for collective action? Which (archetypical) devices can be designed to give a shape to the ambitions for these stations? The station as a public space and catalyzer for urban interventions in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam is the focus of the research initiative presented in this publication. City of Innovations Project – Living Stations is organized around speculating and forecasting on future scenarios for the city of Rotterdam. ‘What is the future of Rotterdam with the arrival of a new metro circle line system?’ In the past fifty years, every decade of Rotterdam urban planning has seen its complementary metro strategy, with profound connections with the spatial planning and architectural themes. Considering the urban trends of densification and the new move to the city, a new complementary strategy is required. The plans to realize 50.000 new homes between the city center and the suburban residential districts in the next 20 years go together with the development of a new metro circle line consisting of 16 new stations; 6 of which will connect the new metro line to the existing network. Students of the elective City of Innovations Project (AR0109) have been asked to develop ambitious but plausible urban and architectural proposals for selected locations under the guidance of tutors from the Municipality of Rotterdam and Complex Projects. The Grand Paris Express metro project in France has inspired the course’s approach. Following the critical essays on the strategic role of the infrastructural project for city development interventions, the ‘10 Visions X 5 Locations’ chapter is a systematization of the work of 35 master’s students with input from designers of the City of Rotterdam and experts and academic from the University of Gustave Eiffel in Paris. The research-through-design process conducted in the City of Innovations project - Living Stations consists of documenting and analyzing the present urban conditions of selected station locations in the City of Rotterdam and proposing design solutions and visualizations of the predicted development of these locations.

In the Dutch National Environmental Vision 2021, new living and working locations are mapped on existing urbanized sites - mainly at catchment areas of public transportation (PT) nodes or stations. This is the case in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam, where new developments projects are taking place at several station locations. In the Rotterdam Mobility Plan “inclusiveness in mobility” is emphasized by setting several objectives for a PT node. These objectives address the mixité of facilities and attractiveness at station locations with public spaces, accessibility with more bikes (and sustainable modes of transport) and fewer cars in the city centre [3]. How could the station as a node respond to future challenges of seamless travel, inclusivity and the changing intensity of cars and pedestrian flows both in the centre and the periphery of the city of Rotterdam? The book intends to answer this question through the narrative of six research-by-design projects, conducted by the students of Complex Projects group and enrolled in “City of Innovations Project” elective, “Inclusive Stations’’.