Catalyst Landscapes / Urban Form

Background/Introduction

Rotterdam was leveled by Nazi bombing in WW II, but rose to become Europe’s most vibrant and diverse city. What was once 19th century farmland along the Rhine River was carved into Rotterdam’s largest harbor, Maashaven, the largest and busiest port in Europe. Behind a robust system of dykes and around the harbor, grew a blue-collar neighborhood with low income housing stock, but with little attention to parks and waterfront access.

A familiar post-industrial story unfolded. Harbor activities declined and their jobs left with them, leaving behind unused port-related buildings and affordable housing for recent immigrants. Today, harbor neighborhoods like Carnisee and Afrikaanerwick, while rich with culture are woefully lacking the kind of vibrant parks we now associate with our 21st century culture of social, recreational, and environmental resiliency. While development proposals for the area have appeared over the past decade, none have gained traction with the city, owners, and surrounding neighborhoods. In response, the city initiated an urban revitalization plan, calling for a new large park, Nelson Mandela Park, designed by SWA/Balsley, as its centerpiece. Understanding that parks must be nearby the communities they serve, the park will reclaim twenty acres of the innermost portion of the harbor as the neighborhood’s recreational nexus.

Course Study Site and Objectives

The specific area to be redeveloped extends for one half mile along Maashaven’s southern waterfront. Currently chock-a-block with a variety of older buildings and uses, this ribbon of post-industrial heritage holds the possibility of being transformed into an urban mixed-use district with vibrant streetscapes, plazas, and waterfronts that simultaneously enhance rather that gentrify the existing, adjacent, culturally diverse working-class neighborhoods of Afrikaanderwick and Carnissee.

Too often, real estate development and landscape architecture operate in silos, resulting in leftover open spaces that bring little value to the development or the communities they serve. The unique partnership between the landscape option studio and the Master in Real Estate’s “The Development Project” course provides an opportunity for students to collaborate in the preparation of a realizable, sustainable, and financially viable development scheme for the Maashaven district. Working together in small teams, students will find common ground and language as they seek to create a development paradigm where the public realm and its open spaces play a key role in the development’s urban form, financial viability, and public benefit. As an eight-unit course, the option studio will meet twice a week, overlapping in one of the meetings with the four unit The Development Project course, as well as the one-week site visit to Rotterdam with the MLA studio.