IABR The Next Economy with ‘Hackable Cityplot’

During the weekend of 23 and 24 April 2016, the IABR will kick off its seventh edition: IABR–2016–THE NEXT ECONOMY. The opening weekend marks the beginning of an exhibition and a continuous program of activities in and around former warehouse Fenixloods II in the Rotterdam district of Katendrecht.

DELVA Landscape Architects, One Architecture, Stadslab Buiksloterham Circulair, STUDIONINEDOTS and The Hackable City will communally present the Buiksloterham projects during IABR2016-TheNextEconomy. The installation ‘Hackable Cityplot’ zooms in on a number of concrete projects that are the result of the clash between the chaotic world of the bottom-up with a top-down urban planning, where cooperative co-design processes run in parallel with traditional urban development.

Many of the parties that are working on the new live-work district in Amsterdam Noord signed the Manifesto Circular Buiksloterham in which they underline the ambition to close the cycles at the highest possible level. The former industrial area on the northern IJ-bank has thus become a living lab for experiments that contribute to a radical change to transform the city towards smart, socially and circular.

For realization of these goals and strategies, new collaborations and business models are essential. Traditional parties review their role in Buiksloterham, services are executed by other players, buildings and landscapes are developed and designed in co-creation. Not only the rules of the games are changing; the game itself is different.

With the development strategy ‘Cityplot’ the circular vision has gotten a spatial translation; at an urban plot a mix of people, functions and building types are gradually and flexibly, in high density and durably realized. The buildings, the landscape and its inhabitants are part of a dynamic system in which the flow of material, waste, energy and water is linked in new ways. The concept of Cityplot is a dynamic process that combines self-build projects with social housing, work/home units and social hubs, bringing together individuals, collectives, investors and small-scale developers.

The clever use of new media technologies plays an important role. In a ‘hackable’ city civilians, designers, entrepreneurs and policymakers use these technologies to improve the infrastructure and amenities of the city again and again. Using social media and big data stakeholders get new insights into local issues and organize themselves around collective goals.

Buiksloterham is not a blueprint, but designed to adapt new insights, both planned and spontaneous. Systems and infrastructures are organized such that self organization plays an important role. The installation of Hackable Cityplot is thus responding to the need for concrete answers to questions about the design of an resilient, adaptive, renewable, productive, social and circular city, in short, to transitions that keep on changing The Next Economy.

Hackable Cityplot not only presents this particular process of citymaking, but lets the IABR be a reason to perpetuate the ‘lessons learned’. With a series of debates, workshops and mini-symposia next iteration will be proposed, undertaking an ongoing learning process.