CLOSING SESSION - F. Moerel „Transforming a city from within"

Thank you. I think you can hear me now, right?

Okay, great. Okay, I'll share my... Thank you very much. Yeah, I wish I was on the floor, unfortunately I'm not, but thank you anyway for inviting me, for inviting the office and MVRDV. Love to do this, especially because we do have work in Poland. We worked there for quite some years already, and now also actually working in... which... so very excited to be part of this and to give this mini lecture. So thank you for inviting, and I will share my screen from here. All right.

So yes, regeneration of industrial cities. I turned the title into transformation of a city from within. And of course there are many ways, and we explored many of them. So I just wanted to bring you along through a mini lecture, a mini series of projects that we did to show you the different possibilities. Because yeah, transforming a city from within, why from within? If you can also go to the outskirts and make it easy for yourself, because there's space enough, especially I would say in Poland, maybe in the Netherlands less. But so why from within? We think cities are super valuable. Of course they have a lot of history, they have their own economy, their own dynamics, etc. So use that and use the value of those places. But of course how to connect? Still, and I'm trying to get to the next slide, but that doesn't work. It worked before but it doesn't work now. Okay, yeah, it does. Great. So this is our slogan we use very often. It seems very generic, but we really value this. It's creating social, innovative, realistic, and green remarkable architecture, but especially the last part, for a changing world, is something that we are very, which is very dear to us. And I think that is all about the regeneration or the transformation of cities for a changing world. Of course. So how to do this? How to connect to this changing world and how to bring comfort into these ever... every square meter of our super valuable planet in a smart way? How to keep our environment somewhat green? Including some of the very short introductions: three founders... um, Paris and Shanghai. But of course like everybody else, I've been working from home like today, very comfortable, yet cannot wait to actually explore the world again. So this is our presence indeed globally operating, and our scope is quite wide and not just architecture, also urbanism, interiors, installations, and everything in between that is needed to do good architecture and to indeed be of value to create new places and new places within cities. So going back to transforming within the city, from within the city, like how do we do this? Many different ways, I think as many ways as there are many cities. So let's go explore a couple of those that we tried to explore before. For instance, one is putting a city on a map, or putting it back on the map, putting it on a different map as before. Because I chose two Rotterdam projects for this, while we are operating globally, and Rotterdam has been on the map for quite some time, but still not on every map. So let's see Market Hall being the first one that I wanted to show. It used to be on this... if you see on the left, very... you know, this open space right in the city center, like a landing lane for four planes. And what we simply did is build an arch out of housing, also social housing, put a roof over it, and make this street which you will find in between as a public space, basically having a market there. On the right side you see the busy opening day with the queen right there. And after five, six years it's still being frequented by so many people, and not just people from Rotterdam but really over the whole world. So creating a street in a way, semi-public space, celebrating food in this case, putting it on a different map, in need of food lovers, delicacy, etc. And even at some point people were starting to wear shoes of the Market Hall, and we've been on the news, and not just for nothing, because really a lot of tourists and a lot of extra value into rental space grew enormously. So come to Rotterdam, she says, and we're like maybe not all together and maybe not all at the same time, but of course really making a new destination in Rotterdam was the goal, and up to now that really worked. So putting it on the map of tourists was at that moment happening.

Um, the depot, Boijmans Van Beuningen museum, right in the city center of Rotterdam as well. We just delivered this building which you see on the right side, and on the location as you see it on the left hand side which was a park. Now of course all open space in any city is super valuable, you also always have to treat it in the best way. The choice from the city and the museum together was really to put this archive, which is actually the first publicly accessible archive in the world, to put it right in the city center. And yes, it's in an open space, but sometimes you have to put priority first. And if you see the left image, it was also not of the highest quality, and the park is much bigger, so we extend it to that. And to ease the pain, well of course some people are against, you have to work with this, it's logical. But now the building is there, seeing also how we could add a place green and add to the skyline. We see that people actually start to embrace it and start to love it. And here you see the many neighbors that we have: other museums, architects institutes, huge hospital Erasmus, etc., all being our neighbors. And that's why this building is also round, to not put your back to anyone. It's also why it's mirroring, to be open and inviting. That's why we put trees on top. Of course it's less valuable than when they're on the ground, but still, having a publicly accessible view towards the city in between the trees is quite an achievement, I would say. You see a section over the building and the inside, and yeah, how much more can you be part of the city than in this way, to really reflect and start to have a discussion with the city and being part of the scenery as well.

Actually, the building we had, we established in Poznan in Baltic is a bit similar in that way. It's marking a moment or a place right outside of the historic center, but still really marking a new growth towards the outskirts at the fair side. And on this, well, not the most beautiful side with a lot of traffic, but still, by creating this backspace as you can see in the right side image, which is public space, and to use it in different ways. So it's not only an icon that you can see from afar with sort of a brutal look, as you will, but also creating the inside space, the inner space in between these buildings where a lot is happening. It's curated as well, so it needs effort, but if you start it, people will come and enjoy these kind of evenings and these kind of adventures, like the art pieces underneath the building. And so proud to see indeed in the First Flight magazine that actually the Poznan building is right in between all the other historic buildings, really becoming part of that city. So you can force sometimes, and sometimes it's needed, and not just to be all delicate and try to hide within the urban scape, but actually to do a tour de force, like here.

Well, another one is of course the smart use of the surface of our planet and to densify is something that we are always keen on, especially in the Netherlands where everything is very crowded. So how to do this? How to make a vertical village? So it's vertical, using the smallest plot, and at the same time keeping it personal, keeping it informal, inclusive. And to find all the pieces in a city which actually are empty still: flat roofs, little gaps, little niches. You can add so much program to a city where we actually didn't look before. So this kind of pile of individual densification. And in a small scale we did this for the Dylan Village, actually another Rotterdam project. Maybe because I was involved in these, it could be. Anyway, to add another layer just above the obvious one and to create another extension in this way, just by adding volumes right on top of the flat roof, to add an oasis for these people who did not want to go to the outskirts while they had too little space. So we built them a little village right on top of the village that was already there.

Now research is one point that we find super important as well. So in the left hand you see an Asian example of how it's not humanified. It's only about densification. How can you create enough light, enough surface and balconies and comfort? And actually this is such an example. So there's much work to do still. And by scripting and optimization we try to tweak our designs to make indeed these unique spaces even on a higher level.

Amsterdam... you... housing to create a beautiful residential area with unique balconies and a lot of green, so really bringing comfort into the city as you can see here. But also mix use, a lot of different types of program together: offices mixed with retail and commercial space and residential area.

Now to transform a changing world, this is indeed a more industrial site. So Rock Magneten in Roskilde, Denmark. Now we were asked, we would find the site on the left hand as you see it, and on the right hand was all transformed. You hardly see it from the outside, but you can see it from the light coming from within that the program has changed and the buildings actually find new life. Of course also a very valid and valuable way of looking at cities: to reuse and reclaim land and how to make a very vacant space as an industrial area cool again and turn it into a destination. Like here with a rock museum and a rock school and some student housing, as you can see here. It's a program added but also transformed. With the rock school here bringing a totally new scenery to the city, a part of the city that is actually very close to the center and was vacant for a very long time.

Now in Poznan also, the Concordia Design, finished in September last year. You can see on the left hand how it used to be the island right in the city center with the scenery of the mural on a vacant building right there. And that's the vacant building that we actually turned into a new destination and also combined commercial, not all public, but still with public space on the roof even. And people embracing it, as you can see. People still sitting on the greenery here and using the building as a new scenery. So this is it's in the middle island right there. It had this old building, we transformed, we restored that part of the building and added the new part, which was actually originally also there as a volume.