IABR 2024: A16 Rotterdam

Casus

The "traffic machine"

Throughout the project, our research found that highway mobility infrastructure often embodies the modernist ideal: representing a traffic machine where functions were clearly divided, monofunctional and prioritized the car. This infrastructure has often left a legacy of fragmenting urban and natural landscapes, creating disconnected, isolated ‘islands’ in the process. Today, this division burdens urban and natural environments and contributes to air pollution and noise, and forms barriers to connectivity, all of which strain well-being. The vast areas occupied by this infrastructure form a kind of ‘space reservoir’ that extends beyond the infrastructure itself, and traverses many landscapes. These conditions open up new opportunities to rethink and redesign highways in ways that support more integrated and sustainable urban and natural environments. The development of Rotterdam's Oostflank, intersected by the A16, raises the question of whether we should view urban highways differently in the 21st century. Will the A16 continue to split the city like an asphalt channel, or can it become a structuring lifeline throughout the landscape?

A new vision for the A16

In the studio, we explored how a mobility transition could create space to improve quality of life for all current and future inhabitants of the Oostflank and the City of Rotterdam. By integrating living, working, recreation, and nature, encouraging more independent movement throughout the city, smarter mode-switching, and shared vehicle use, the urban space required for car traffic can drastically decrease for the next generation. Moreover, by reducing traffic speeds to 80 km/h, traffic flow would improve and roadways would require less space. This freed-up space could be repurposed for local roads (at 50 km/h), high-speed bike paths, recreational cycling and walking routes, and a variety of ecological connections.

The A16 zone could then transform into a vibrant corridor connecting the Maas and the Rotte—a green, flowing landscape with high-quality urban developments along its banks. This area would blend residential, commercial, and recreational spaces, with amenities right at people’s doorsteps and natural flows becoming revitalized. The qualities of Kralingse Bos could extend into Alexanderpolder, while Kralingse Zoom would evolve into a lively, urbanized quay marking the city's entrance. Along the Maas shore, designed as an urban tidal park, Rotterdam could once again embrace its identity as a true delta city.

Manifesto

Designing Urban Ringways differently

During the process of the studio’s interdisciplinary ateliers, and through research and sketching, we formed a vision for the A16 existing of three design principles, that transforms the A16 from a locked-in technical megastructure into a multimodal, integrated and flexible connector, fit for the future. The three principles are applicable to all urban ringways in the Netherlands that face similar problems:

1. Multifunctional
   In the future, highways should not be monofunctional, but multifunctional. The assignment of designing mobility infrastructure will become much broader and beyond designing only for the car. Many more different “flows” must be interwoven: the car, but also the fast bicycle, pedestrian, tram line, ecological flows, climatic conditions, and more. When approaching infrastructural mobility projects of this nature: consider who uses, and what conditions engage with the highway now and how - create an inventory. How can these diverse users and conditions be combined in new ways?
   
   
2. Integrated
   The landscape below and surrounding mobility infrastructure crosses culturally important, green and urban landscapes, so has the potential to connect these landscapes physically and make them experienceable for users. In the future, we will no longer see highways as an asphalt canal rising above the urban landscape on a body of land, but as landing in and responding to the underlying landscape. Small, medium and supra-regional scale green networks can be made through harnessing the “space reservoirs” of the highway, and the design should emphasize making connections between these landscapes. Mobility infrastructure should contribute to the urban program of new neighborhoods by considering their interaction and connect to the tissue of the city. This broadens the ownership of the innovation task of urban highways to area development in general. When designing modern highways ask: how can the existing landscape surrounding the highway relate to the infrastructure and make it stronger, more connected and experienceable?
   
   
3. Flexible
   Knowing that the needs of mobility will often change and are constantly in flux and uncertain, we need an infrastructure that is flexible. A new road typology is dawning here, that is dynamic with a high capacity. The availability of, for example, mobility hubs, the changing role of cars and their use in cities, will have a major impact on how infrastructure should be designed. Knowing that mobility is in flux, its infrastructure must become adaptable – explore what the first steps are towards transitioning towards, and realizing, this flexible future.

IABR

Exposition IABR 2024: Nature of Hope

Our proposal was presented to key studio collaborators and internal stakeholders, shared with the general public during a public presentation with keynote speaker Prof. Ir. Matthijs van Dijk, and exhibited as part of the IABR exhibition"Nature of Hope" in Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Did you miss the exhibition? Check out our sketchbook and the interview video below.