Tagged: urbanism

Spherical panoarama, or little planet, made of twelve photographs taken at the lawn in the little park in front of Saint Lwarence's Church in Rotterdam

19. June 2017

A New Park, a New Panorama: Saint-Lawrence’s Planet

There was a time when I made a lot of spherical and tubular panoramas but the last one, at Kruisplein, dates back to over a year ago. There are two reasons for this. First of all, those little planets are actually quite time-consuming. Well, Photoshop takes a lot of work out of your hands, but you still have to work hard to eliminate minor irregularities, fill in missing information, and tweak details. Secondly, I became a lot more critical in choosing locations. I am looking for special places, geometric shapes, beautiful compositions or other reasons. And I just do not… Read More

View from the Codarts building towards the Calypso block and Westersingel during the Rotterdam Rooftop Days 2017

Photography

14. June 2017

The Rotterdam Rooftop Days 2017

There are a few moments each year, when many places in Rotterdam can be visited that are usually not accessible. A great opportunity to get to know the city in a completely different way. There are in fact four of those moments: the Open Monuments Days, Architecture Day, the Hidden Gardens and the Rotterdam Rooftop Days. Unfortunately the Rooftops and Gardens are always in the same weekend, even though there are no less than 52 weekends in a year. Why is no one coordinating that? Anyway, a difficult decision had to be made. A decision that this time turned out… Read More

Detail of a knitting pattern of the Rotterdam skyline

Various

14. April 2017

The Rotterdam Skyline Knitting Pattern

3Develop, the reliable source for all your knitting patterns … I have the feeling that a lot of my blog posts start with “… is not 3Develop’s core business, but …”. This is one of those posts again. Graphic skyline It is yet another spin-off of my Rotterdam skyline project. I made this graphic portrayal of the city’s skyline a few years ago for a contest. Which I lost ingloriously but since then the picture, in different versions, has started to live a life of its own. It hangs on walls, it adorns birth announcement cards and on April 9… Read More

The Barge at Night, artist impression of the new Feyenoord stadium on the banks of the river Nieuwe Maas in Rotterdam

Design / Visualisation

10. October 2016

The Barge: a New Stadium for Feyenoord

There has been talk for years about a new stadium for Feyenoord, to replace the legendary football temple, also municipal monument, De Kuip (The Tub).Allthough I am not as frequent a visitor of the stadium as some of my fellow townspeople, I also have my memories of De Kuip. For example, of a competition match of Feyenoord against Vitesse: 2-1. Pierre van Hooijdonk was still playing then, so it must have been a while ago. Much longer ago I was at the best concert of the (twentieth) century by Eric Clapton. With Elton John as a disastrous support act and… Read More

Huf Building, a national monument from the reconstruction era, photographed from the square near Saint Lawrence Church, late in the afternoon, with the building and its lighting reflecting in Delftsevaart

Photography

14. March 2016

The Reconstruction Top 10 – Rotterdam Highlights from 1945-1970

The the post-war reconstruction period of Rotterdam lasted roughly from 1945 to 1970. That doesn’t mean that there were no empty spaces left to fill after that. But still: in those first 25 years after the Second World War, the center of Rotterdam changed from a barren plain back into a bustling city. And in that quarter of a century a lot of exceptional buildings were built in the city. That calls for a (extremely subjective) top 10. Historical layers It is a common misconception that Rotterdam is not very interesting in terms of architectural history because all history has… Read More

Spherical panorama Bourtange, The Netherlands

Digital art

27. April 2015

The Link between Bourtange and Rotterdam (and between a Pentagon and a Sphere)

A few weeks ago I was in Bourtange, the well-preserved fortified village in the Dutch province of Groningen. At least, I’ve always thought that Bourtange was a nicely preserved piece of history. But that’s not entirely correct. For more than a century, the fortress was completely gone and Bourtange was a boring farming village. In the nineteenth century, the fortifications were demolished and the canals were closed, which happened in many places in those days. Reconstruction Not until the sixties of the twentieth century came the idea to rebuild the fortress. In the seventies and eighties that idea was carried… Read More

Paintified image of former cruiseship SS Rotterdam, with the neighbourhood of Katendrecht in the foreground and Waalhaven industrial area in the background

Digital art

28. February 2015

Markthal, Katendrecht and other Rotterdam Paintifications

Rotterdam, as you may know, is packed with tall buildings. But unfortunately most of those buildings are not accessible if you don’t live or work there. And that’s a pity because the city is at its most beautiful and surprising when viewing it from a higher point of view. Higher ground Fortunately, in every year there are those days when you suddenly can get to places that are otherwise off-limits: Architecture Day, Construction Day, Heritage Day. Over the years, I ‘ve been able to look at my city from above many times. The photographs I made on those occasions now… Read More

Fragment of the double street map of Rotterdam which compares the streets, blocks and harbours of the city in 1939 and 2014

Cartography

27. October 2014

Rotterdam: a Tale of Two Cities

Anyone who studies a street map of Rotterdam before 1940 gets confused. Rotterdammers today would have a hard time finding their way in that pre-war city. Not only the buildings are different, also the street plan has changed beyond recognition. There are in fact two different cities. Those two cities share the same location but are separated by time. With a breaking point at the day of the bombing: May 14, 1940. Of course, other cities have also changed enormously since, say, the 1930s. But nowhere are the differences as dramatic as in Rotterdam. The destruction of the street plan Not… Read More

Spherical panorama of Gelderseplein in Rotterdam, featuring the White House, the reconstructed Wijnhavenhouses, the Old Harbour with the Cube dwellings and more

Digital art / Photography

26. September 2014

Gelderseplein Rotterdam: Another Spherical Panorama

Gelderseplein (Gelderland Square) is a new square in the center of Rotterdam. It’s on a site that lay vacant for years after the construction of the railway tunnel. Around it we find a diverse catalog of architectural styles. Most prominent is the White House, which was the tallest skyscraper in Europe after completion in 1898. At that time it was criticized by many as “too American”. The building survived the 1940 bombing but was nearly demolished in the seventies for the construction of a huge roundabout that fortunately never came. Next to the White House there’s a row of eighteenth… Read More

A graphical representation of the Rotterdam skyline with all important buildings, bridges and other icons, in four different color schemes

Design

17. June 2014

A New Skyline for Rotterdam

In 2014, Rotterdam Festivals organized a design competition for a graphical representation of the city’s famous skyline. The organization used such a skyline as its logo. But in that year, three new icons were added in quick succession: Central Station, Markthal and De Rotterdam building. That called for a new skyline logo, hence the competition. The prize money was… nothing at all. Nothing? Indeed, it was all about the honor. Actually, as a designer you shouldn’t want to participate in that, but hey, it was for a good cause. And I had a good idea…. The colors of the skyline… Read More