Studio Beyond - 2015
A20 Motorway - Rotterdam
Energy & Infrastructure
Whilst at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten/Amsterdam School of Architecture, I completed the P5 project, tutored by Riette Bosch of West 8 and Rene Heijne of Maxwan. This studio was based around the future of motorways and how we might be able to re-approriate the space on them in urban contexts.
Project Introduction;
The network of highways in Holland is nearly full. Future developments of the network will focus on new technologies to improve the capacity (driverless cars, car sharing policies), reduce emission & noise (electric car, hydrogen fuel cells) and improve multimodality etc.
These developments will change the relation between large scale infrastructure and the urban context. New opportunities can be explored on locations where monofunctional infrastructure used to be a negative barrier and developments being restrained by noise-and air pollution. The future will not be a about extension of infrastructure and urban developments in virginal land but Beyond. The future is about optimizing the existing tissue towards a more intense, smarter and healthier integrated system. Studio 'Beyond' will explore these new opportunities.
Project Synopsis
It is estimated that Rotterdam Port looses on average 54% of the energy it produces through heat waste. This is more than all the energy created and expected to be made in the North Dutch Sea through wind turbines. Staggeringly this heat energy is enough to power over a million homes, one seventh of Holland.
The industry in the port also gives out a huge amount of C02. Due to this pollution in the port the air quality is worse than Shanghia and London combined.
In this project, I proposed trapping the heat waste at source and re-directing it into the city wide centralised heating network. This would heat homes, public buildings and on average save each home owner 2000 € p/a. In unison with this the C02 would also be trapped at source and fed to the enormous greenhouses that make up much of the Dutch landscape and economy.
Using research that arose via the Rotterdam Bienalle I began this project in earness. I was to later find out via a council official that similar proposals are being put through government. This certainly reasurred me that I wasn't going mad.
I thus continued the project exploring how the A20 Highway could accomodate this transportation of different energies and what that might mean on the ground. How could the landscape architect maximise this new energy stream.
This research finished with a digital presentation. Below are extracts of this presentation which should give an indication of the project as a whole.
Knooppuntpolderplein
Energy Transformation Hub
