Institution: Master Class at Berlage Institute
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
Date: Spring 2009
Project Team/Credits: Onur Ekmekci, Yong il Kim, Kemin Wang, Luis Carlos Bustos
At a time when the economic and political institutions that have been producing the official hyper development in many contemporary cities have come to stand still , it is important to reevaluate the role of architects in re-thinking the institutions of urban development. At this juncture of economic crisis, can architects, in addition to designing buildings, also participate in designing political and economic process?
In order to find an answer for this question, this short masterclass(one week long) focused on one of the most problematic neighborhoods of Rotterdam, a city that tries to become “creative”, but loaded with socio-economic internal conflicts. The neighborhood of Afrikaanderburt, where majority is consisted of immigrants, with low income levels have passed through a dramatic transformation in the last 5 years, housing blocks were demolished and built anew under “modern” standards, parks were reconfigured and fenced, the market was declared a sensible security zone, the streets were sanitized of difference and this transformation continues even today. In this area, as in many in Europe, design and beauty has been the perfect to control, repress and displace.
Afrikaanderburt has a street market, called Afrikaansemarkt. This open free-market which is held two days a week, is currently in a vulnerable situation; increasingly restrictive regulations(not only on local level, but also in EU level) and socio economic tensions are threatining its existence. Main objective of this master class was not only to reexamine the relationship between the instutitions that forms structure of the market, and create alternative policies that would enhance the efficieny and the attractivenes of the market, but also to as a direct result of these new alternative policies, create spatial solutions for the market in a micro urban level. Also to understand of what are the processes that constitute the problematic Rotterdam neighborhoods and expose the contradictions at play in the problematic zone.
