Projetos Urbanos

After more than five years in Brazil, I have recently moved back to the Netherlands. For the moment I´m living in Rotterdam, while I´m working at my new job with AA&P in Amsterdam. The Projetos Urbanos website and email will continue to function normally.

Port of Rotterdam

North-South connection of Rotterdam over the river Maas

New mixed use developments on the south bank

Zeche Zollverein is part of the greater regional plan Emscher Park for an obsolete industrial region in the German Ruhrgebiet. The plan is supposed to attract leisure functions, culture, innovative companies and design firms to the green postindustrial setting. The Zollverein project, with master plan by OMA, is still running with lack of funding. The design academy with a brand new building by SANAA went bankrupt for lack of students. On the one hand parts of the complex, such as the Kohlenwäsche and the public space in front of it, are being beautifully renovated for cultural events and museum use. On the other hand, most tourists seem to prefer the rundown parts of the Kokerei, dusty, rusty and derelict.

Map of the premises: the Coking Plant, Mining Shaft XII and Shaft 1/2/8

New walkways through the main railway yard of the coal mine

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

The Coking Plant (Kokerei)

Mining carts in the old workshop

Short video impression of the complex by Mark van der Schaaf (2006)


Read more:
www.projetosurbanos.com.br/2007/05/13/zollverein-essen-germany/

This week the results of the open ideas competition for the new architecture faculty of the TU Delft were presented. During the ceremony at the Nai in Rotterdam minister of culture and science Plasterk handed out the prizes. Liesbeth van der Pol, head of the jury, presented the 8 nominees. All projects are displayed in Nai Rotterdam (Gallery 3) from 15 march to 7 june 2009.

Projetos Urbanos was among the projects included in the so-called longlist of 50 projects in the second phase of the juration. In total 466 projects were evaluated.

Read more:
Nai – Building for Bouwkunde competition
Archined – the nominations

Model of the old building, displayed at the Nai exhibition

Project: Educational Landscape
Architecture: Merten Nefs and Vanessa Grossman
Company: Projetos Urbanos
Year: 2008
Gross floor area: 60.000 square meters
Evaluation: jury selection for longlist

“The Bouwkunde site is located at the transitional space between the urban and rural zone of Delft. The project is conceived as superposition of both scales. The ground floor is treated as a patchwork of activities, which are distributed in parcels and can continuously be redistributed and appropriated by the Faculty’s users. These parcels are covered by a flexible greenhouse structure.
Three serving buildings emerge from this landscape channeling the flow of people, the way anthills do, towards the studios. These “anthills” are in their singular form a pile of earth and vegetation with excavated service chambers.
The studio slab and the office tower represent an important contribution to the existing skyline of the city.”

After the dramatic loss of the TU Delft faculty of Architecture in a fire May 2008, the educational structure was kept together in tents at the campus´ sports fields. With incredible speed and creativity a new temporary faculty was improvised in the old university administration building at the Julianalaan. Already some people say it is actually better than the old building, although some activities are still ´homeless´ due to construction delays of certain spaces. In the meantime an ideas competition was launched for the future faculty of architecture.

Also see: post about the destruction of the old faculty in May 2008

The old administration building at the Julianalaan

New work space

New urbanism department

The old faculty building being torn down

Inauguration of the tents at the university sports fields (with gypsy music)

When I entered the exhibition space in Rotterdam and saw the videos of a slum being demolished by digging machines, I was almost certain that it was about some Latin American country. Not Brazil though, since the graffiti on the structures was in Spanish.

I couldn´t be more wrong, the slum was a big gypsy settlement on the outskirts of Madrid. The video is about the good intentions behind this demolition, like social equality and equal rights to housing, healthcare etc.; about how today´s utopia of equality and social integration is destroying cultural diversity (in this case the gypsy culture) and how the slum demolition becomes a spectacle of consumerist society.

The video is a project by Democracia, a Spanish artist collective founded by Pablo España and Iván López. As a travelling exhibition it was part of the Rotterdam Museumnight, 7 March 2009.

“The union between welfare and consumption is the principal characteristic of present day developed societies, with basic needs fulfilled, consumption provides new symbolic meanings that go way beyond the actual object being consumed. Freedom, social progress, solidarity and democracy are accessible through consumption and the targeting of the capitalist worldview is generated through the mechanisms of the performance [...].

In this context we propose a meeting between the integrated and the marginalized society at the right time when the welfare state acts in search of justice and equality: One of the largest slum settlements in Europe still survives in Madrid, which is called El Salobral and is found in the Southern periphery of the city. Last March the Community of Madrid and the City Council agreed to its demolition and the consequent rehousing of its inhabitants, with the majority being of the gypsy ethnic group. In this settlement those persons who are clearly marginalized by socio-cultural factors are found together with those who are voluntarily there such as drug dealers in search of an area away from police vigilance. On the other hand, the demolition of the slums and the consequent relocation of its occupants attract new inhabitants who come to this area looking to be rewarded with a new home by the social services. The extinction of El Salobral not only implies the destruction of sub-standard housing but also making the land uninhabitable so that it can no longer be built on.

The project developed by Democracia conceives the staging of the demolition of this marginal community as a performance for all members of civil society. Over and above considerations such as the disappearance of specific cultural forms (that of the gypsy culture), the civil society celebrates the disappearance of the ghetto via a media performance. The “integrated” civil society are the hooligans who applaud the action of the diggers demolishing the ghetto. The path of the marginalized society is its integration in the spectacular consumption society, which will assure them of their basic rights.”

www.democracia.com.es/proyectos/welfare-state/