Filling the Void From Leftover to Place

Spatial Development Plan Hondo Valle

Borja & Muxí (2000), said “in the city, first the streets and squares, the collective spaces, only later the buildings and the roads will come”. Out of scale elements in a city ignore the basic human needs of space, therefore people avoid using this areas of the built environment and they can be interpreted as spatial voids. Monolithic buildings and high traffic roads have created a spatial structure that has disconnected socially and visually, people from people and from place (Salirangos, 2001).

The area of Rotterdam South contains facilities that have an important role in the city, such as the Ahoy Convention Center, the Zuidplein Mall and Metro Station and the Hospital. These large scale facilities occupy an important area of the neighbourhood, however, some of these areas are not used by the inhabitants, mainly by visitors outside the site. In addition to this, residential streets are absent of actors, there is not a collective life and no interior-exterior relation. These spaces, the ones not used by residents, create ‘negative’ spaces in the neighbourhood.

The project focuses on the Metroplein strip to connect the local theatre with Ahoy Rotterdam and transforming the residual areas of the station’s traffic machinery. It consists of waiting areas for the different transportation systems, shops,eating and resting spaces, along with promenade to link cultural anchors of the area.

MSc Urbanism Individual Project Rotterdam South, The Netherlands

MSc1 - 2nd Quarter [November 2016-February 2017] TU DELFT

‘...sense of enclosure. The enclosure of space in this manner is the purest expression of a sense of place, the centre. It is here that order is created out of the undifferentiated chaos of the world beyond’.

Cliff Moughtin, Urban Design: Street and square

Conceptual Development for Metroplein Strip. Observing Metroplein Station the spatial character of the space and the potential as the essential destination on the area.

Site analysis with attention to scale, infrastructure and public space activities

Reflective Stainless Steel Ceiling in the foyer and waiting area to reflect natural and artificial light, the rest of the station ground reflects from below with two water mirrors.