Amsterdam Decentraal
Re-imagining Architecture through an Ecofeminist lens
E.V. Bos (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Milinović – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / U)
R.R. van den Ban – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / AE+T)
Irene Luque Martin – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
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Abstract
This project explores how our architectural practice can be reimagined through an ecofeminist lens. In doing so, it addresses the global climate crisis by confronting it at its core: humanity’s broken relationship with ‘nature’.
The project is rooted in an understanding of spatial design as a world-making practice, one that not only shapes material reality but also produces meaning through its storytelling capacities. It questions and critiques contemporary architectural practice, which is deeply rooted in colonial and capitalist systems, and counters this with a practice centred on connection rather than divide.
Through a method of Radical Spatial Imagination, complex theoretical and philosophical notions are translated into spatial manifestations. This process resulted in 18 insights which embody the ecofeminist lens that was developed throughout the research. It is through this lens, represented by these insights, that the design project unfolds.
The projects continues in a speculative reimagination of Amsterdam Central station. Here the station is reimagined not just as a multispecies landscape or a project on ecological continuity but as a place that fundamentally questions and reshapes our relationship with our environment.
Amsterdam Central station is transformed from a sterile, smooth and efficient transportation hub into a messy place of interconnected entanglements. Harsh, dry, dead and TL-lighted spaces are replaced with leaky wet and sun-kissed area’s full of life. By breaking boundaries and facilitating more than human agency it disrupts tempo and forces human actors to let go of control.