Final Project
From drawing plans for a new city bridge to a intercity station as transport node and generator for urban development of Rotterdam South and Feyenoord City
The final project of the minor will constitute of an assignment leading you into the practice of integrated infrastructure design. The municipality of Rotterdam is the main commissioner which provides an array of design issues which include bridges, routes, embankments or underground metro or railway stations. It is not only about designing objects but also about creating new conditions for mobility and urban development.
As Marc Verheijen, architect and one of the commissioners, explains: “In the last two months of the minor the students will get started with the final project. We ask students to tackle issues that will influence the cities of the future regarding mobility, energy transition, liveability and social life. As practitioners, we do not yet have the opportunity to explore these issues and design challenges in full. So the students will get the opportunity to freely explore, research and design.”
In every group students from different study programmes will work together. Verheijen explains: “ This is deliberately chosen to make sure that students from Civil Engineering and Architecture will work together with students like from Mathematics, Urbanism, Systems Engineering or Policy and Management. They learn to benefit from each other’s strong points; this is essential preparation for the practice of Integrated Infrastructure Design.
Mark Scholten is one of the students who participated in an earlier edition of the minor IID and is now doing an internship at the Department of Urban Development of the municipality: “Off course you learn a lot during lectures, but experience in the field beats everything. It is interesting to work on a real assignment with a real commissioner. It is very motivating that the municipality takes you, a student, seriously”. Three of the teams from the 2017/2018 edition are now invited to present their designs at the municipality for an audience of employees.
Minor Coordinator Hans de Boer explains: “The students experience that the new bridge they design is not merely an object, but in its essence a connection between parts of the city. They learn to understand that the bridge has not only has a technical and architectural side, but also a liveability, mobility, economic and social side to it.”
To illustrate the array of design issues of the final project from 2018/2019 the integrated design of a new eastern city bridge and from 2019/2020 a new intercity station for Rotterdam South/Feyenoord City:
Animations Integrated Designs
