The designed intervention seeks to tie the Park, the large area of green space opposite the Euromast, spatially and functionally to the city of Rotterdam. An essential component of the scheme is the use of promenades to stitch the Park to the harbour basin of Veerhaven and so also to Westersingel, at the same time strengthening its relationship with the river Maas. A historical museum, a new element sited in the Park to encourage Rotterdammers to visit it on a more regular basis, sits well with the developed scenario. In a subsequent step, the Park, the residential area east of it (Westerkwartier), Veerhaven and Willemsplein can be attached to Central Station and the city centre by way of Museum Park. The intervention is a response to the Park's degradation from a city park in the 19th century to a peripheral local affair mainly used these days for the odd large-scale festival.

The landscape intervention has a number of objectives. These include strengthening the Park's features on the Maas side and its rapport with Westerkwartier; making the Park more accessible and improving its relationship with the quayside and river; and restructuring the grounds of the former villa De Heuvel. These objectives are fleshed out in a detail design of Park and quay that works up the elements already on site. Thus, for example, the Bult, an artificial mound, is expressed as terraces surrounded by concrete walls from which two stairs announce the entrance to the Park and the 'Museum Platform' respectively. This section of quay is lowered to the level of the river water, drawing the Maas into the Park as an active landscape element. The projected historic museum and the existing Herenhuis, the main building of De Heuvel, work together on axis with the Park to define its scale and impact. The new building slips naturally among the existing buildings in the Park through its position there and its relationship with the context. In all this, the intervention is almost a logical continuation of the Park's current development.

The building's configuration has its roots in the 19th-century typological model of a museum. Characteristic elements - gallery, main corridor, exhibit rooms - take their place in the design. However, unlike the original introverted museum layout, principally oriented as it was to the fully internal atria, the designed museum looks out onto the Park and the river.

As a museum, the building has been fleshed out further in the relationship between space and construction. The construction is space-defining and relates directly to the spatial layout, with a key role accorded to the cross-scale system of measures. The building can be construed as a construction kit with a limited number of pieces whose three-dimensional variations within the deployed layout generate imagery of a spatial diversity. The architectural significance of the construction takes pride of place, the logic of its spatial image being more important than a 'truthful' visual expression of the distribution of forces.

Place of education: TU Delft
Specialization: architectuur
Tutors: Henk Engel, Henk Mihl, Clemens Steenbergen