Markthal Rotterdam And Port City Urban Design - 1749 Words

Markthal Rotterdam and Port City Urban Design Rotterdam is known as the Netherlands number one city for architecture (Groenendijk, 2015, p. 114). It is easy to see why when one considers the overwhelming number of iconic buildings in the city, and how those individual buildings, while creating a cohesive city, have managed to and continue to transform Rotterdam. Markthal Rotterdam, one of the iconic buildings, is an award winning combination of open-air market, department store, shopping centre and residential building. It won the 2016 Rotterdam Architecture Award and the German Council of Shopping Centres award for European Innovation (Rotterdamer architekturpreis fà ¼r die Markthal, 2016, 126). Markthal Rotterdam was designed by†¦show more content†¦8). The idea of completely reconstructing the historical city centre to its previous splendor was discarded by van Traa and a new spatial layout designed to separate functions and accommodate traffic was developed (Groenendij k, 2015, p. 8). Nonetheless, the fire line of the German bombing is still visible due to the difference between the old, nineteenth-century buildings and the new, post-war construction (Groenendijk, 2015, p. 18). The Basic Plan for Reconstruction implemented an efficient traffic plan on an orthogonal grid and the separation of functions was influenced by modernist urban planning ides. However, the Basic Plan only governed urban planning in Rotterdam until the 1970s when criticism of the emptiness, lack of housing, and lack of warmth was overwhelming (Groenendijk, 2015, p. 19). For example, in the book De binnenstadsbeleving en Rotterdam (The Inner City Experience and Rotterdam), R. Wenholt criticized the reconstruction of Rotterdam in the late 1960s stating that the inner city failed at providing a vibrant, varied, convivial, pleasant, intimate city (Meyer, 1999, p.328). The Markthal Rotterdam addresses the criticism of the Basic Plan, although the outdated Basic Plan didn t directl y influence its design, by creating a vibrant welcoming public square