Complete Schiedam

CITY SCALE

Complementary and Competitive: Schiedam should embrace its exceptional urban setting in which the historic core of the city and the city’s industrial zone coexist in extremely close proximity. Connecting these two conditions into one functional and legible whole would reveal this dramatic juxtaposition and create the premises to articulate it into an attractive urban constellation. From a fragmented small town unaware of its treasures and focused around its poorly connected mini centers, Schiedam should turn into a coherent compact city with multiple meanings. It’d become an open-air exhibition of all of its historic layers, offering exceptional quality of living and working conditions. As such, the city can position itself in the network of centralities with Rotterdam, Delft and Vlaardingen. Back to the water: To realize the ambition we based our proposal on the reestablishment of the Lange Haven and the connected space along the Schie River to the south as the main spine of the city. Stretching from the train station to the Maas River, cutting straight through both, historic city and industrial zone, the canal is the logical city connector. Strategy for incremental development: A flexible framework has been set up, identifying spots and areas of interest along the canal. The  framework allows gradual transformation of those places in time. From minor interventions like activating plinths and public spaces on the short term to the optimization of the distilling industry cluster and the larger scale redevelopment of the New Mathenesse on the longer term. While the most impact is achieved when realized together, all of the projects keep a critical level of independence, so that the realization of every one of them separately brings a measurable quality to the urban space.

KEY SITE

The focal site of the project is a meeting point between industrial zone and historic town. Two very different spatial development strategies are envisioned for the two most important places on the site.

Densification of the VROM site: VROM site is a programmatic booster. Leisure, parking, new industry, expo and research facilities are envisioned and tested in scenarios. All of them, in scale and type of program, complementary to the historic city and industrial zone. VROM site becomes a new destination in Schiedam.

Cleaning of the Koemarkt square: Cleaned from all the noisy details, Koemarkt becomes a representative arrival point and, at the same time a gateway for shifting the city’s paradigm to its historic origins, the space around the Lange Haven. The square facilitates the traffic flows, while reinforcing commercial and leisure uses in the building plinths at its perimeter. Realized as a simple shared surface, it also connects the residential neighborhoods from the northern side of Rotterdamsedijk to the Schie River.