Guy van der Wildt

from viaVIA 61 Contours of a new Decade

Article: Hajo Schilderpoort

Graduation project VERHOOGD VERTRAAGD

Today we live in an urban society that is mostly characterized by acceleration, fast dynamic networks and a strongly increasing degree of social pressure. Stress, burnouts and depressions are examples of mental health complaints that are not strange in our everyday society; they are the result of an individual’s inability to escape from external, overwhelming stimuli within an urban context. However, this inability to escape excessive urban stimuli is not only a problem characteristic for urban life in the 21st century; it is also something to which individuals have been subjected to for at least 100 years (Simmel, 1903; Rosa, 2016).

To find a solution for this urban problem that has only grown over time, the main question of this graduation studio called “The Aesthetics of Deceleration - Spaces of Slowness, between intermediate size and intermediate time” (TU/e 2019-2020) – is whether it is possible to link the design of intermediate spaces to the concept of slowness. This makes sure that, through the application of architectural and urban physical-spatial design elements including the mental experience of these – an individual can escape the overwhelming stimuli in an accelerated urban context: the inner city of the metropolis of Rotterdam.

To find out whether there are already physicalspatial places of slowness perceptible in the current urban context of Rotterdam – in other words, places where individuals already can experience slowness in a fast-oriented urban environment – the project “VERHOOGD VERTRAAGD” (or in English “HEIGHTENED DELAYED”) started with ‘wandering through the city’ as a subjective research method. Striking from this search for slowness, the result was that places of slowness are scarce in the city center of Rotterdam.

Actually, the city is characterized – or dominated – by acceleration, high dynamics, and the large scale highrise developments in the inner city of this metropolis. Should a new, elevated layer in the city be developed to implement this experience of slowness in the future city center of the metropolis Rotterdam; including the possibility that an individual can break free from the daily, dynamic, and accelerated city?

Based on a critical reflection of the current and future high-rise developments, accompanied by the need to develop slowness in the inner city of Rotterdam, “VERHOOGD VERTRAAGD” has produced a utopian-realistic design proposal for the development of a second ground level in the future city of Rotterdam. The main concept is to implement a new layer at the height of 70 meters in particular (the current high-rise boundary in Rotterdam), consisting of a network of continuous, elevated, and layered public domains that must enable individuals to distance themselves from all overwhelming urban stimuli. Thereby, these public domains should also stimulate the metropolitan man in the experience of slowness within the accelerated urban context. In this graduation project, the concept is, on the one hand, developed as an urban strategic masterplan at the level of the city center of Rotterdam. In this masterplan, the newly designed high-rise buildings are – together with the already existing high-rise and the future high-rise developments as proposed by the Municipality of Rotterdam – divided

into six different clusters. The idea is that the new layer in the city center will function as a continuous network of elevated, multi-layered public domains per cluster. This design approach based on ‘cluster operation’ is appropriate to the size and scale of Rotterdam; differently than the already existing continuous public networks known in Hong Kong or Tokyo for example. On the other hand, the concept is also developed as a physical-spatial urban and architectural design, elaborated at the level of a chosen cluster out of the masterplan: the cluster “Coolsingel-Blaak”. The design of the cluster consists of nine new high-rise towers (varying in heights from 70 to 250 meters) that function as a fundamental basis in the development of the second ground level. The idea is that within and around these high-rise towers (or on the roof of the existing buildings in the cluster), multiple public spaces (such as squares, terraces, roof gardens, plateaus, platforms, viewpoints, etc.) are located at different heights.

Together with various physical connections (such as bridges, lifted walkways, cable cars, ecoducts, etc.) between these indoor or outdoor public spaces in which the experience of slowness is central, a continuous and meandering network of elevated public domains is created; functioning as a horizontal and vertical pendulum within the cluster. Within the cluster design for the second, elevated public layer, an indication of the design for the public domain has been elaborated. This elaboration is based on an abstract-surrealistic visualisation to express the experience of slowness in the future high-rise city of Rotterdam. “VERHOOGD VERTRAAGD” can be seen as a project that raises new and critical questions and that – due to the chosen utopian-realistic design approach that is elaborated in a deliberately applied abstract realistic-surrealistic way – opens a discussion about the application and design of elevated networks of public domains in future high-rise cities. Because, how do we deal with the design and layout of the public domain in the high-rise city of the future? And besides, to what extent do we take the mental health of city dwellers into account while designing public domains in a future and on high-rise based metropolitan urban context; creating the experience of slowness?