 Mr. Kees Christiaanse
Partner KCAP/ASTOC architects & planners
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Born in Amsterdam in 1953. Christiaanse studied Architecture at the Delft University of Technology, graduating together with Art Zaaijer in 1988. His graduation project, ‘Kavel 25’, was realized as part of Christiaanse’s urban plan for the housing festival in The Hague. He was awarded the Berlage Flag for this project. Between 1980 and 1989, Christiaanse worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, becoming a partner in 1983.In 1989, he started his own firm in Rotterdam, Ir. Kees Christiaanse Architects & Planners, which was renamed KCAP in 2002.In 1990 he also founded ASTOC Architects & Planners in Cologne. He has been a professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Berlin University of Technology from 1996 until 2003. From September on he is professor at the ETH in Zürich. He regularly acts as a jury member for international competitions, and is the author of several publications about architecture and urban design.
Short description of presentation: "Housing in Harbors in Holland"
With harbor activities vanishing from the center, the Dutch harbor cities have acquired a vast amount of redevelopment land, where the first projects started in the 1970s. The article describes the evolution of conceptional and political attitudes from the 1970s to today, reflected and illustrated in a number of urban and architectural projects in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Gradually it becomes obvious that providing housing in harbors is the key to urban revitalization, but that sustainable harbor neighborhoods can only produce a true form of urbanity when they have a carefully developed mixture of functions that also consider the existing structures and activities. To achieve this, a sensible organization of stakeholder management is indispensable as well as a phasing concept, in which private investment runs parallel and complementary to public investment. |
