Kop Dakpark – give something back to the city

Reflecting on her own experience as a two-time Europan winner and thereafter on the 12-year trajectory of her office with partners Cornelisse and Verhoeven, Ninke encouraged participants to consider the advice in her lecture as input for their Europan projects. She walked through several projects in her office’s portfolio, in Belgium, and Switzerland, pointing out qualities of each which challenge minimal design standards. From Cadix, a high quality, low budget social housing project in Antwerp, with its intelligent construction technique and expressive facade that accommodates large terraces for residents, to the space-crunching Tilburg housing tower that does more with less, to her analysis of the Kalkbreite housing project in Zurich’s city centre, Ninke illustrated opportunities for challenging the status quo with architectural projects that innovate the cities they are part of and improve the lives of those who live in them.

These projects are not only technical responses to design challenges, but social catalysts and organizers, functioning as new pieces of the city, within the city. She emphasized the fact that Europan participants must care for the people they design, and care about transforming an urban void or maximize the use of a valuable piece of land, creating buildings that give back to the city and its people.

• Care while strategizing for your Europan design intervention; care about transforming an urban void into something
• A new building block is an opportunity to give something back to the city
• If you want to create special architecture, you need to know how its made; take time to consider the details
• Be a partner to your client and of the building contractors to create something more than
• Challenge the Dutch status quo with high quality design that serves inhabitants and generates community
• The ethos of Het Rotterdams Woongenootschap: housing is no longer something you generate profit with; it is something you use together

• Consider the needs of the residents of the building: if the city wants to attract young families into the core, design spaces with amenities that families need
• Allow people to define the way they want to live
• Families need more functions in their apartments
• Ascribe high spatial and finishing qualities to all dwellings and consider revolving occupations (moving within the building when spatial requirements change)

Ninke is a founding partner of Happel Cornelisse Verhoeven, an award-winning Rotterdam architectural practice.

One of the three founding partners of DROM, Sofia also reflected on DROM’s Europan 14 win with Foam of Production in H-Buurt, Amsterdam. She drew attention to the unique perspective the team offered as outsider-insiders, having worked in a Post-Soviet Russian context, and then practiced as architects at OMA. Walking the audience through her team’s evaluation of the history and systems at play in Bijlmermeer she highlighted the site’s historical development, as it was built for the middle class who left in favour of areas with more amenities.

Their proposal intensifies and diversifies the monofunctional site with different activities which work in tandem to create a productive neighbourhood. It choreographs movement through space (three centralities): one, the site’s entry; next an educational square (with internal workings / makers / production); finally, an existing public plaza with a community centre. This will be a temporary structure which provides pace for people to learn about what’s happening in their neighbourhood. Although the proposal differs significantly from the City of Amsterdam’s ambitions for the area, the team is in discussion with a local church organisation, housing corporations and community members to determine how to proceed with the site’s development.

• Find ways to create opportunities for residents already living in the area
• Create cultures of congestion by implanting density and catalyst program
• Feed into the site’s social / physical ecosystem by connecting with the circular economy

• Make use of positive features: green space, anonymous backdrop, existing small businesses, mono-functionality
• Take account of negative features: vastness, unprogrammed space, spaces under roads, inefficient street parking
• Intervention emerges as a solution to these challenges (people working from home in spaces that don’t accommodate their work – solutions might bring together different parties)

Sofia is one of the three founding partners of Rotterdam-based studio, DROM, a team of urbanists, architects and designers whose ambition is to realize engaging spaces for people.