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MVRDV=Winy Mass(M)+Jacob Van Rijs(VR)+Nathalie de Vries(DV)

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KM3/The 3d City

The enormous production of built‘matter’-houses, warehouses, factories, offices-in the last decade has consumed space and sometimes leads to scarceness of space. It results in higher groundprices and demands for stronger investments. Can it imply another urbanism? Can it result in a city in which 2 dimensional planning is replaced by a 3d one? Can it cause an urbanism that generates space instead of consuming it?

This suggestion demands for another perspective in urban planning: ‘below ’and ‘above’ are as important as ‘behind, beside or in front’. It no longer matters where zero level is, since it is everywhere. Squares will be replaced by ‘connections’, parks will be altered into ‘stacks’, ‘far away’ will be transferred into ‘proximity’, ‘order’ will be replaced by ‘simultaneity’.

Three sites in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been explored on their technical and spatial potential for the 3d city.

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Rotterdam

The involuntary absence of a 16th or 17th century layer seems to liberate the Rotterdam city center from a moral dilemma towards densification. By adding up infrastructure, ‘city-ness’ can be combined with accessibility. These three dimensional addresses allow for additional programs. They are positioned in small left over plots.

The bigness of the possible programs forces widening at higher altitudes and makes connections with neighbouring programs. In order to avoid the building from buckling, support has to be found at their neighbors. This creates a three dimensional district.

Two idealisms have been investigated.

2

Rotterdam | Motorway

It is striking to see how relatively unused the zones around the current motorways that surround the cities are. In spite of their extreme accessability, sofar nothing more than relatively cheap and unattractive areas have resulted.

Can we not use these city-corridors for further densification?

This is possible by increasing the number of addresses along such a corridor. By developing a series of parallel roads at lower speeds, the interval between off-ramps is reduced and approaches the plotsize for possible programs. This leads to enormous ‘branching-offs’, stacked where necessary, and allows for a massive city with infrastructural erosion.

3

Rotterdam | Friedman

The placement of individual, phased volumes with different sizes, results in a diverse network of cantileved connections. It constructs an unexpected and airy environment.

4

Rotterdam | 2nd floor

With one rule, a collective second floor can be constructed. A new zero level, supported by structural volumes, turns the city into a town of contrasts: a twinpair of differences in scale and in climate will appear.

If downstairs is about shadow and tranquillity, the second floor can be about sun and wind. This can select and attract different programs.

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Amsterdam

The Amsterdam historic city is dominated by an urge or even a syndrome to retain its monumental character.

This has resulted in a protected legal status with requirements that limit modern programs. It has led to an exodus of programs which can no longer be accomodated for reasons of scale or style, while they might have enriched urban life.

It turns this city into a museum for touristic purposes only. Can we stop this exodus without violating the monumental appearance? Can we imagine a city underneath the current one, liberated from the aesthetic burden of the upper world?

Three technical typologies have been explored for their spatial urbanizing consequences.

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Amsterdam | City hall

Through replacing the current pile foundation by beams underneath existing buildings, a spatial freedom can be generated.

Subterranean towers support the programmatic roof over a giant public hall.

7

Amsterdam | Gotham

By putting retaining walls around the buildings, the current streets can be dug out and the existing volumes can be extruded downwards. It will become possible to ring at a door in an alley and to enter a 100,000 m2 headquarter building. Retaining the existing tramways in the streets and walkways along the facades, it turns Amsterdam into Gotham city.

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Amsterdam | Mining city

By freezing parts of the soil, cavities can be constructed in concrete. Cupolas, tubes, cavities and grottoes can then arrange an underground circuit. When these ‘bubbles’ touch the existing street level, a Pantheon-like lightwell generates light and access to the underground.