WORKSHOP DESIGN AS POLITICS: LAURENS

In the laurenskwartier, a lot of public space still has opportunities for improvement. That, together with a wish for more residential buildings forms the static basis of our vision on the development of the are the coming years.

How we see this happening, is by extrapolating some previous initiatives, and offering room for new ones as well. The images we show you are an impression of an optional completion of a reorganization in the Laurenskwartier. However this can be done in many different ways.

We see chances for connecting the area, by creating more lively public space.  The Laurenskwartier feels like a visited area, and not so much as an area that is being lived in. Initiatives like on the Meent are shifting this idea and feel. A street like the Hoogstraat now still mainly is a place that is visited in certain times of the day by all kinds of people. By choosing the right inhabitants of the shops on ground level, we can create a public space that is as well owned, as visited. Also the Botersloot and Pannenkoekstraat are good examples of well developped streets.

Other kinds of public spaces can be developped firstly by designers and municipality, to attract entrepeneurs to the borders of that space. This is going to de done with the “Wave-project” and on the Binnenrotte. Here landscape-design is a trigger for people coming to visit as well as new initiatives coming to stay.

The coming years, these different kinds of public space will get a new identity by initiatives of all sides (designers, municipality, the inhabitants of rotterdam, stakeholders and real-estate owners). After allowing this to happen, we can optimalize the public space we have. Right now the amount of square meters that is public space is high. The demand for more residential area is high as well. We think that after boosting this area into a more “residential feel”, we can actually start to use the space like this by creating new, as well as redevelopping old buildings for households.

The result will be an even more lively area, with high quality public space, that is not too big and always as well owned by the people that live there, as well as visited. The new buildings can be placed on the large Binnenrotte without blocking the space for actual market by creating “makthall-like” buildings. On either north and south side, high quality “A-kind-of-Dutch” public space with a nice scale for terraces, can be created. Exact places and plans for this last development is not to be decided upon yet. This all depends on what the future will bring, and people will want.

– Di Fang
– Doris van Hooijdonk
– Krzysztof Pydo