An interview with Vierhavensblok winner, Izabela Slodka

Makers’ Maze

collage of vierhavensblok winner makers maze

Makers’ Maze

Visualisation: Izabela Slodka (zoom-in into Maker’s Maze, where hybrid typologies illustrate the coexistence of working, and living, in one formal assembly).

The Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) port area development is as large as Rotterdam’s inner city, and represents a bright new future for this former industrial area, aiming to combine living, working, and innovating. As one of the five Rotterdam sites for Europan 15, Vierhavensblok functions as a gateway to M4H, moving west from Kop Dakpark. Because Rotterdam is a port city, former industrial areas such as M4H define its character, and for this reason, Izabela Slodka and Erica Chladova’s winning Europan proposal for Vierhavensblok is significant. It will help to craft a strong connection to the city, while remaining a distinct part of the city’s fabric. Heading up the next phases of the project’s development since receiving the award in early March, in the interview that follows, Slodka offers insight on what she’s learned so far in the Europan process.

Can you tell me a little about Vierhavensblok and the core concept of Makers’ Maze?

Makers’ Maze creates a flexible method, rather than a rigid design. The proposal’s ambition is to create new conditions for creativity, circularity, interaction, sharing, and freedom while preserving the existing character of Vierhavensblok. The area’s uniqueness lies in its informal character where participants discover the unexpected around each corner, and where chance encounters breed new collaborations. So, taking these qualities as inspiration, our proposal presents a series of interlocking building clusters organised around a network of passages, streets and squares, creating a unified, resilient, and intriguing urban scheme. It provides significant space for organic growth, and its combination of new manufacturing industry, urban facilities, housing, culture, and a circular economy lays the foundation for an interactive, and forward thinking area, and a new testing ground for Rotterdam.

What did you learn about the site and its inherent issues in the months following the competition? Do you feel that the Europan assignment is still relevant to issues you’ve perhaps become more attuned to? 

My main activities following the competition have been talking to the people that live and work in Vierhavensblok, and I’ve been pleased to discover that many occupants share Makers’ Maze’s vision, and have quite a few ideas for the site. This seems a bit unusual with many different owners and participants, but they have a community and work together closely, wanting to ensure a bottom up, mixed-use development. They affirm the potential in the urban proposal, and this makes me feel that there is a willingness to move forward with it. However, the main complexity is that there is substantially more volume needed. The square meters in Makers’ Maze are not substantial for what is needed. The urban qualities in the proposal suit the site, so as long as I can make it work with more volume, it has great potential. I will be working on reconfiguring the complex, because it is quite porous, with a lot of levels, so it’s important to balance this with additional square meters, and feasibility. This will help to retain existing qualities while enabling maximisation in future. A reality check has to be imposed, but I’m positive that this can still be accomplished. 

One formal assembly

Visualisation: Izabela Slodka (Makers’ Maze as an assembly of overlapping functions).

What is the relevance of your proposal in today’s current situation given current debates regarding living in cities in relation to COVID-19? Does this inspire you to reflect on and change conditions you’ve proposed in your design?

Based on my own experience in my current living situation, I feel I’m missing certain amenities close to home. This absence became much more evident during the pandemic. In particular, access to green spaces close to home becomes extremely important, so the Makers’ Maze proposal accommodates green spaces on different levels, with a garden in the center and buildings framing outdoor areas. These create tight communities, and occupants can find enough outdoor and indoor space to interact in small groups of neighbours. 

The Europan proposal accounts for a certain degree of freedom whereby occupants can customise spaces for their needs. We are all required to spend more time where we live, so it’s important to have freedom in outdoor space, not only space we pass through but to have the ability to take ownership of it. With working and living mixing and sharing functions, people living in the vicinity can benefit from shared commodities, shared tools, and more things can be produced. In essence, there is more capacity for production in shared spaces, even in small clusters, if we scale down to the closest neighbours in the composition of a couple of multifunctional spaces, there is an opportunity to find different spaces and tools that you need to facilitate production during these times.

How has the pandemic affected your progress? 

The pandemic slowed down progress initially, but it’s safe to say that things have picked up now. There is interest from the municipality, residents, and members of the Keilekollectief are also reaching out to ask about the project. They want to discuss it and have interesting solutions to the challenges.

Overlapping functions

Overlapping functions

Visualisation: Izabela Slodka (in Makers’ Maze, different functions overlap and intersect with each other, creating a 3D cluster of mixed-use spaces. Living, working, exterior and interior spaces share areas that belong to both. At the junction of different functions, there is a room for interaction, learning and exchange).

Based on these new insights, what do you feel is the most important quality of your proposal that offers a relevant solution to these issues?

The strong connections between indoors and outdoors, because this really benefits people when they are required to stay in one place, as well as the access this provides to green space outdoors, and access to community space at the neighbourhood scale. In the proposal this is spread out over a series of squares, with a precedent example of which being the Voedseltuin in the middle of the complex. This already performs this function. With housing around it, it serves even more communal purposes.

What are the most important lessons that relevant parties (developers, cities, etc) should gain from your Europan experience and your proposal?

That there are lessons to be learned and there is value in the experimental solutions and alternative processes at play in building cities. These prevent generic solutions, and can be accomplished by looking closely and determining what’s already thriving in the location, instead of applying solutions from other contexts. There is great value in experimentation, and added benefits in leaving certain freedoms in the plan. This really works in Vierhavensblok, and could also function well in other places in the city and in the country.

What changes do you want to advocate for in the development of this site and the surrounding area?

The first changes I would advocate for would be the introduction of a more urban scale in this industrial site, by mixing, in the form of alleys, squares, and streets. Key connections should be created on site using the existing infrastructure, and linking it to surrounding areas, for example: Marconiplein, and Dakpark. This helps to create high quality pedestrian spaces where mixed-use typologies of working and living can thrive. This must be accomplished in a way that makers and inhabitants can directly benefit from the intersection of these functions. 

To that end, what is missing in the current focus for the area, and how can the intervention effectively address this?

I think it’s what is there now, is great. Workshops are free to function, and makers take ownership and organise themselves in community. However, the current focus is mostly on adding densifying the area with new housing. There is not enough attention on how existing workshops and new residential functions can come together. More time should be spent on studying how these can be combined, and function within the scale of the architecture and the urban spaces. 

Can the development of this particular site and area serve as an example to similar contexts in the Netherlands?

Yes, and to that end, I’m also conducting research on mixed typologies and how living and workshops can coexist in a city. It’s still an area of growth as to how to do this effectively in multiple sites in the Netherlands, for example in Eindhoven, and Amsterdam, as far as the transformation of post-industrial sites to housing and mixed-use developments is concerned. There remains an ongoing question as to how to mix housing and working; there are not so many examples that I’m aware of.  Also in Rotterdam there are many sites where this question becomes relevant. 

For example, in Rotterdam’s new development for Zoho, no one wants to sacrifice existing mixed-use qualities and the ad hoc makers and artists ateliers. There must be a way to integrate this with the housing above. There are so many examples where transformation is completed, but these often leave little space for informality and freedom for the users. Instead, they link new developments to the industrial past in a superficial way, without assuring the same qualities of interactions. There is valuable freedom in undeveloped sites and as soon as you develop in a standard way without allowing experimentation, you lose these qualities. You lose diversity, and it’s extremely important to understand how we can best preserve it. 

Multi-level clusters consisting of workshops, housing, and shared functions

Visualisation: Izabela Slodka (a 3D printed model of a part of the Makers’ Maze plan illustrates the concept of creating multi-level clusters consisting of workshops, housing and shared functions. These volumes create a series of diverse public and semi-public outdoor spaces situated on multiple levels of the plan).

Vierhavensblok winner, Makers’ Maze

image of izabela slodka

Izabela Slodka

studied in Cracow, Poland and at Delft University of Technology, where she received her master’s degree in 2016. Her project “Collage and Continuity” was nominated for Young Talent Architecture Award – part of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, organised by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe. After winning the Europan 15 competition in 2019 with her proposal Makers’ Maze, she founded her own studio, Studio Iza Slodka.