CITY OF OPTIMISM
Inzending voor Europan 11
Ontwerpteam: Daan Petri, Eric van Noord, Mo Smit
Juni 2011
Without a huge intervention Amstel-III is doomed. A non-communicating area built for solitary mindworkers is not going to survive an era where social interacting and global networks define our future. While its next-door neighbour, the Arena-boulevard and the new Bijlmer arena train station are designed for large masses of people celebrating the bright side of life, Amstel-III is left behind in the rain. A little further down the road a second major asset of Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, the Ikea, proclaims ‘affordable solutions for better living’ overlooking gloomy parking lots and dreary office spaces.
This proposal talks about connections. Literal programmatic connections, i.e. from Decathlon/Prenatal, Ajax Arena/Heineken Music Hall, through Bijlmer station to the new Ikea-town, but also spiritual and social connections: a new public space has been designed as a green strip that is made for wandering, meeting, shopping, hurrying, working and living for everyone and no one in particular as opposed to the existing one-dimensional offices spaces that have been scattered around the modern wasteland of cheap building fabric. For this new public space to be successful a blunt but yet optimistic vision is being laid out: large urban blocks will provide for a clear framework. These urban blocks sit in a orthogonal grid cut diagonally by the public strip. This lay-out also structures a strategic transformation process.
By starting with the construction of the public strip the area automatically increases in value. It will be interesting for investors again to start transforming their existing buildings, to tear them down and build new ones or to sell them for more money.
All streets will develop into real urban streets with contiguous buildings. In time a densely organised city will pop up. The building blocks have the same footprint as a block within the canal belt of Amsterdam or a Manhattan block. Amstel-III will be the modern cosmopolitan counterpart of the historic city center of Amsterdam. Within our strategy freedom is left for different kinds of users to settle down, be it a huge shop like H&M, a Chinese Bank, students or a tiny exotic grocery store. Since the boundaries of the main building blocks are clearly defined, endless freedom is offered to the mixed programme. Different architectonic styles can exist side by side. Separate parcels are melted together, owners and users decide to cooperate in order to improve the quality of their surroundings: true city life is born.
