Abstract

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Abstract

Statement: Offering a metropolitan residential environment that is socially and economically well connected with the existing city, that is still somewhat affordable for the new urban dweller: starters and young families;

Graduation assignment: Showing where and how this can be done within the contours of the existing city, which has a relatively low building density;

Reflection: Is this approach a viable path and if not, why not and when and under what conditions, if any?

I. What Amsterdam: a city where house prices are rising faster than average incomes, where locations are so scarce that people are considering building above the tracks, after artificial islands have already been constructed in the IJ and activity has been moved further and further west.

The Zuidas dock shows that stacking above infrastructure is not easy and very expensive. And while living near stations is very important for better accessibility and a reduction in car use and ownership. Often, construction is done first and public transport only comes years later.

However, there are several places in the city that are easily accessible by train and or metro, but where the use of space is not optimal. Outdated offices and other industrial buildings, abandoned sites, poorly accessible greenery: the fringes and residual areas of Amsterdam, but with a train station or metro stop.

It concerns a total of 912 hectares: an area as large as the medieval city plus the canal belt from the Golden Age that can accommodate 87,310 inhabitants at an FSI of 1.9. This assignment is a plea to rethink our way of designing our future neighbourhoods: No restructuring and no new construction in the some random meadow, but something in between: our forgotten places of the city.

II. Where Spatial research has highlighted five sub-areas that are potentially suitable for large-scale new construction around existing stations and stops, in the short and medium term. While many residential and work areas did not get their public transportation until years after completion, these stopping places never got their stable quarters and neighbourhoods. How come?

By installing rail infrastructure afterwards, which is customary in the Netherlands, stations often arise outside the urban area. Infrastructure is given space here, resulting in monofunctional traffic areas around sidings, marshalling yards and viaducts, all owned by the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) with its own interests. Development here is certainly complicated, but is it more difficult than reclaiming islands, digging harbor basins or constructing a North-South line? There will come a point when these complex locations come into the picture and urban development and rail infrastructure are overlaid again, which is already common in other metropolises such as Stockholm, Paris and Hong Kong.

That is the assignment for this research: to take one of the five locations as an example for a study of urban development opportunities. The most extreme location has been chosen: Duivendrecht Station, a grade-separated crossing of tracks and metro lines next to a pastoral village church. Welcome to the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area!

III. How Here you can live great with your nose at the station and therefore with one foot in the centre of Amsterdam. With the qualities of a lively, metropolitan district and those of the wet nature that has been drawn in. This location has been closed to people for years and therefore flora and fauna have benefited from this notion.

The Duivendrechtse Poort will focus on various forms of collectivity - in a higher density than we know in the city centre: from FSI 1.9 to FSI 4.2. That means even more room for meeting. Not only on the street, but also in naturally and climateadaptively designed courtyards, cozy neighbourhood squares and a large, green meadow that forms the heart of this new neighbourhood. Here you can have a picnic with your children or celebrate your birthday by barbecuing. And don’t forget the new sports forest, where after a long day at school you can play football with your friends or play tennis with your neighbor. Or do you just want to enjoy the sun and relax, you can always go for a swim on the new jetty at the metro station. Creating a buzz on the central meadows, promenades and squares of this project and more peace and relaxation on the green edges and residential streets.

In the future, we will not only meet at the ground floor, but also at different levels. It will be a paradise for pedestrians, who themselves have the freedom of choice to move through the area.

This is possible through the green streets, where you always have the feeling that you are still walking through the landscape. Or at a level, with access to super cool roof gardens and terraces, so that you can experience the area in a completely different way.

All this has been designed in a strong shell of wet and green public space. And worth to mention, the semi-public inner gardens also form an informal route through the area. This gives you as a pedestrian a third option to move through the area. So wherever you are in the Duivendrechtse Poort, as a pedestrian you always walk through the landscape and as a resident you always live in the landscape. With more focus on public transport and strengthening the existing landscape qualities, this will also really be the first car-free district in the city. Here you live really healthy as a new Amsterdammer!

IV. Now The focus on typology is actually the most valid way of designing and building at a high speed. By taking the Amsterdam urban block as starting point and combining them with the higher typologies that have already proved themselves abroad, it is finally a proper answer for the housing shortage both city and country are facing as of 2020.

Imagine if only half of the 912 hectares could be redeveloped for housing or mixed use environment, it makes it possible to house more than 220 000 people. That’s the same amount of people that is living in Almere – and all realised within the current urban fabric. With more room for the housing experiment, different kind of densities and new typologies. All centred around existing nodes in the city network.

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