WHO WE ARE

We are an office for architecture and urban planning in Rotterdam. In our work we are driven by the conviction that the critical quality of living and working environments is created at the intersection of architecture and urbanism. Our primary focus lies on city transformation projects where we interweave program with spatial and planning contexts on various scale levels to create new urban quality. We believe in the potential and importance of the reinvention of the urban space, perhaps more than in its extension.

WHAT WE DO

We design cities, neighborhoods and buildings to create a healthy, safe and sustainable environment. Working in the context of an increasingly complex and volatile environment we choose to fixate only the most essential case specific targets: characteristic architecture, high quality public space and the interface between them. Building densities, heights and typologies, program and materialization stay interpretable in our plans and we process and visualize them through development scenarios. This approach results in adaptable architectural plans and robust urban development frameworks where various initiatives from both, public and private stakeholders, can find place over time.

PRO-ACTIVE

We often initiate our own projects and search for the partners to develop them. Passionate about making urban plans and buildings, we are equally spirited in understanding and maneuvering the multiple layers of urban space and their interdependence, in search for the right project for a specific place.
Architecture has evolved from being primarily a craft to becoming also an intelligence in a broader sense. It has become a much more powerful tool in spatial development. Beyond formal and style aspects. As such it enables us architects and urban planners to contribute in the development of urban environment in more critical ways than ever before.

THEMES

A number of topics continuously reappear in our work. This is how we understand them:

• Sustainability: an integrated approach towards built development, public space, and infrastructure;
• Program mix: balanced relation between a variety of uses;
• Accessibility: coordination of public transport, shared and private mobility (with a particular focus on pedestrian environments and bike networks);
• Health: facilitation of healthy lifestyle and protection against nuisance;
• Green and water: merging spatial quality with climate resilience of the living environment;
• Society & culture: characterful and layered architecture and urban plans that enrich lives;

Bart Pouw, Urban Planner, partner

Bart Pouw was born in 1977 in the Netherlands. He graduated in 2004 as urban planner at Delft University.

He has a particular interest in complex urban development projects with a great diversity of disciplines involved. From landscape design, architecture, civil engineering to financial strategies. His experience spans every aspect of the spatial development, from sketch to final design and realization, from legislation to policy making.

Prior to establishing Basic City, he worked at Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners (KCAP) in Rotterdam. There he was involved in a wide range of urban projects with a great variety in scale and program. From inner city transformations within the Netherlands to masterplanning in London, Shenyang, Nanning, Belgrade, Prague and Brussels.

Besides his work for KCAP he was a guest teacher at the Academy of Bouwkunst in Amsterdam and graduation tutor at the Academy of Bouwkunst in Rotterdam.

Petar Zaklanovic, Architect and Urban Planner, partner

Born in 1972, Petar graduated from Belgrade University, Faculty of Architecture in 1998 and Berlage Institute in Rotterdam in 2002.

Petar’s attitude toward urban development is based on his long experience in two diametrically opposed working environments: lengthy, process orientated urban development for European cities and high-speed projects in the emerging countries. He believes that working in these two fundamentally different conditions was the key for developing sensitivity and knowledge for creation of critical qualities in Basic City’s architecture and urban planning projects.

Before establishing Basic City, Petar worked for MVRDV, Maxwan Architects and Urbanists and Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners (KCAP). Working as a senior project leader for more than 9 years in KCAP he conceptualized and led more than 40 various projects in different places worldwide.
He was a guest professor at the Berlage Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy from Rotterdam and Fontys Academy for Architecture and Urbanism from Tilburg.

EMPLOYEES / PREVIOUS EMPLOYEES

Wojcieh Pisula, Architect

Pengcheng ZHOU, Architect

Kushal SHAH, Architect and Urban Planner

Anna MACCAGLI, Architect

Kiana NIKOOSIAR JAHROMI, Urban Planner and Landscape Designer

Xiangyu HU, Architect and Urban Planner

OUR CLIENTS