This project is a call for specific reachability and as such provides the tools to realize a readily identifiable address. The brief I have chosen is to give North Amsterdam a new address as a city in its own right between the IJ inlet and Waterland, the rural area north of Amsterdam.

Various sources, both scientific and popular, bear out the burgeoning importance of place in an accelerating world. This has long been a subject of discussion among urban designers, you could almost speak of a tradition in place-making. A 'regional front door analysis' made recently fits into that tradition.

This final-year project acknowledges the need for place-making. Yet it doesn't seek the means to realize that need in the place itself. Identifying with a place, having an easy-to-find address, is here determined largely by the nature of its reachability, in other how you get there.

This thought brought me to the following four-part exhortation. Maximize the front door. Work to achieve an easy-to-read unity at a broader scale. The front door address you end up with may then be of less consequence. Design the image sequence. Orientation and sociability are the motive forces behind designs for the public space we move through. Functionality and security are of lesser importance. It's an old skill applied with a new thrust. Develop domains, acknowledge the urge to widen one's territory. Look for new modes of informal collectivity. Domains larger than home and street enrich the urban landscape. Give a time guarantee. With the increase in mobility, 'going outdoors' became possible for everyone and then impossible again. The accessibility of both the 'great outdoors' and the 'near outdoors' needs securing by apportioning speed and placing a wide range of transport on equal footing.

This project thus seeks to give new substance to Dutch-style reachability. Efforts made during the past century to give everyone the best and most efficient access to everywhere have largely resulted in a profusion of asphalt. We put our trust in ingenious way-finding systems, route planners and GPS to reach our destination. The levelling impact of this development on how we experience the urban landscape has been immense and seems to have been accepted as inevitable. But knowing where you are is not the same as 'being somewhere'. In 'La città muovere', Luuk Boelens posits that even the most hard-boiled globalist and networker needs identifiable, rooted places. Address Known meets this need.

Place of education: Rotterdam Academy of Architecture
Specialization: urbanism
Tutors: Marijn Schenk, Arjan Klok, Dirk Sijmons, Zef Hemel, Nicola Körnig