Rotterdam

After Amsterdam and The Hague, the third volume in the Forum series features the Rotterdam of architect and urban planner Kees Christiaanse. Since the early 1980s Rotterdam has been recovering from the 'soft' '70s under the inspirational leadership of a group of writers, designers and architects. The frumpishness of that decade has been resolutely pushed aside in exchange for a panegyric to the unlimited opportunities of the metropolis. Kees Christiaanse has dedicated himself to this changeover by co-organizing exhibitions and performances in the city. After being a partner in Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture Kees Christiaanse set up his own practice in Rotterdam in 1989. Of the designs and plans he has seen onto site in that city, one of the most important is the dynamic masterplan for Wijnhavenkwartier, a plan open in both temporal and spatial terms with its roots in existing urban traits and with flexible rules of play for the built fabric. This scheme embodies a new step in the tradition of zoning laws, urban rules such as those adhered to in New York. It is Rotterdam that has inspired Kees Christiaanse's concept of the Open City, which earned him the curatorship of the International Architecture Biennale in 2009.