Binnenrotte Rotterdam

The Binnenrotte is situated in the centre of Rotterdam between the Pompenburg and the Blaak. Rotterdam owes its name to this historic spot where the dam and sluices are located. It is now a square lacking in charm, bustling and lively on market days, but otherwise a bare, unattractive and empty space. The Rotterdam city council has the ambition of breathing new life into this part of the city to turn it into a city lounge: an attractive square appropriate to the lively centre of a metropolis like Rotterdam.

We held a number of workshops in close cooperation with local authority designers to make a sketch design for a new layout of the Binnenrotte. Another team developed a sketch design as well. The two designs have functioned as the basis for the layout plan that emerged.

Our design 'Islands in the Rotte' introduces green islands of different shapes and sizes in the urban space of the Binnenrotte and removes the existing promenade flanked by plane trees. This strengthens the unity of the Binnenrotte and increases the contact between the square and the façades and plinths. It also results in a greener appearance, with a good deal of spatial variation, alleviation of the soulless emptiness, opportunities to sit or to play, and plenty of room for terraces, the market, temporary use and large-scale events. The islands function as stepping stones from one bank of the Rotte to the other, while the pattern of fired clinker paving stones flows around them. The islands will be planted with different types of trees with a view to how the seasons are experienced.

The spatial unity of the Binnenrotte as the place where Rotterdam began is strengthened because the space with the islands is articulated but not divided up into parcels. Our plan offers a counterweight to the hard, rectilinear quaysides and evokes the Rotterdam Romanticism of Zocher and Rose.