This project is a study into the need for public space in the city.

Besides writing an essay I unfurled a plan for the old railway lines on Vierhavensstraat in Rotterdam.

The current segregation of functions, uses and users in the city is a reaction against the lack of clarity, the expansion and the acceleration informing our experience of today's urban culture. This is why folklore has been elevated to culture and the public realm given shape as public space for a specific target group. I feel that we need another space, one where collectivity is regarded as the force driving urbanity and binding together the city's physical, social and commercial networks.

My concept plan consists of a development strategy targeted at relationships between use of infrastructure, programme and public space and so also between residential area, port and transit route. The spatial structure I developed to this end espouses a use of programmes and spaces rooted in transformation. The pattern consists of paved and parklike strips for recreation, infrastructure and parking. The volumes lying between the paved strips and below the strips of park are then filled in with programmes organized on the basis of their use over time, their intensity and physical necessity. In the continuous space there emerges a shared use of infrastructure, parking and public space. There are many spatial variations on this theme that facilitate both the private and mass activities of the users. I think that this variation in spaces, which together constitute a counter-site, can generate a variation in their use too. This is because they are not fixed but run together and get to influence each other. This gives rise to 'another' public space.

Architecture can no longer define the identity here as the diversity among users is too great. How identity is experienced is related to programmes, users and the paths those users follow through the public realm. Architecture is born of the relationship between these three. I feel that the heterogeneity and dynamism of this counter-site ushers in another way of experiencing the city that is of relevance today.

Place of education: AvB Rotterdam
Specialization: architectuur
Tutors: Peter Trummer, Henk Oosterling & Wolter Nuis