The submission to Europan 15 (Summer 2019), was to develop a site in the outskirts of Rotterdam.
Groot IJsselmonde is a post-war suburb of Rotterdam, which needs activating to overcome its commuter town history. The proposal is to return to a pre-modern urban layout, emphasising the human scale and the highly varied, complex city, as the key to creating a rich, integrated fabric. Production, infrastructure, commerce and residence is intertwined in the fabric of the city, reducing its dependency on transport, and ensuring that goods and services are local.
However, this principle comes in conflict with modern standards of comfort. The clash between the many requirements of each neighbour, shop and building element is a hard design problem, and the solution proposed is to design bespoke units on a casy-by-case basis.
The solution isn't to shortcut the problem by standardising, gridding and repeating the same block over and over again. Cities are rich, alive and intertwined, and as such, must reflect their complexity. By harnessing the power of computers to navigate the complex solution space, one can find solutions which balance the needs of all the actors involved.