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City-making together: our festival heart as a test site for Schiemond
Just a little longer and the quayside behind the Schiehavenhallen in Schiemond will no longer be a hidden and deserted place, but the lively festival heart of Rotterdam Architecture Month 2025. A place built entirely with reused materials, where visitors, residents and makers discover how you can ‘make a city’ together.
In conversation with RA Month producer Reineke Otten and designer Rune Lierman of Studio Architectuur MAKEN: what are we going to do, see and experience at the site? What was the process leading up to it? And what lasting impression do they hope the festival heart will leave?
Text by Lindy Kuit, pictures by Reineke Otten
Everything is already there
Studio Architectuur MAKEN is realising a stand and stage within the festival heart using residual materials. They also commissioned Studio-Method to design a Starling Pavilion. Rune: ‘Before we started designing, we wrote a manifesto with the following key principle as our starting point: everything is already there. If we care about the Earth, we stop taking and start giving back.
RA Month offers us as designers a moment for critical reflection. We have spent years designing and building in a certain way – how can this be done in a different, better, more inexhaustible way? We want to make examples and put issues on the agenda, such as the Paris Climate Agreement. In doing so, we want to show that you have to work proactively and in the moment with local partners if you want to design with everything that is already there.’
Paris Proof testing ground
Speaking of the Climate Agreement: in 2024, the municipality designated Schiehaven Noord, located next to the Schiehavenhallen, as a testing ground for Paris Proof building. In this living lab, Rotterdam wants to learn, together with market players and knowledge institutions, how to design and build sustainably and affordably, with as few CO₂ emissions as possible.
‘The festival heart also builds on that metaphorical testing ground,’ says Reineke. ‘But we want to make it broader: how can we meet those climate targets together? And what lifestyles that people already intrinsically follow fit seamlessly with the municipality’s climate goals? This is woven into all the interventions in the festival heart in various ways, with the aim of inspiring visitors.’
Picture from left to right: Rune Lierman, Reineke Otten and Martijn Linnarz (Bende Rotterdam)
Biodiverse and circular
When you visit the festival heart, one of the ways you can enter the terrain is via a staircase overlooking the Nieuwe Maas. Rune: ‘The first intervention you then come across is the stage for urban nature, made with materials that were already there. Together with an ecologist, we looked at the current biodiversity and explored how to enhance it with our design.’
‘If you want to design with everything that is already there, you have to work proactively and in the moment with local partners.’
Rune Lierman (Studio Architectuur MAKEN)
The stage under construction on the quay
‘In addition, it is a place to come together and make connections, with lectures and other events,’ Rune continues. ‘The stage is constructed with reused planks of Douglas fir wood and clay bricks from the Rotterdam project Stadsgrond.’ This means that all the materials used are circular, reused, found or given. The wooden planks of the stage even have a special history.
Reineke: ‘For a long time, these planks were used in exhibitions at the Nieuwe Instituut. Once dismantled, the wood was reused, without being modified, during IABR 2024. It subsequently played a role in the Gardens Futures exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut. And now the planks are getting a fourth life as part of a special structure in the festival heart.’
Ode to history
Near the stage, there will be an exhibition by TENT: Where the river is, a project by artist Maud van den Beuken about the thin line between land and water. In the Schiehavenhallen is additionally the main RA Month exhibition: Creating space sustainably. Together with the Klimaat Academie Rotterdam, 27 projects have been selected for this expo that show how the city can become greener, more attractive and more climate-resistant.
‘For decades, the halls played an important role as a storage and transshipment point for goods,’ Reineke says. ‘We are building the scenographic landscape of the exhibition with circular bricks from DC Bricks, including the pallets they arrive on. After the exhibition, the bricks will be used as usual. In this way, we are not only extending the circular idea, but also paying tribute to the history of the place.’
Potential of the place
‘Every intervention has an underlying idea through which we want to change the perspective of the visitors,’ Rune continues. ‘For those not looking at the interventions directly from a bird’s eye view, there are also quotes, so that people stop and take a moment for reflection. In addition, the interventions play with the question: what is architecture? They are not grand gestures, but they do add something on an architectural level. Take the starling pavilion, for instance, designed by Studio-Method. Here you look from the perspective of the starling’s biotope and humans and nature come together in a veritable eco-cathedral. In this case, architecture shows the potential of the place and makes a very forward-looking impression on people.’
Picture by Linda Muysson
Finally, further along the quayside there will be a garden organised by the Gore Tengels foundation. An edible garden, to be clear, in planters constructed using found materials already lying on the quayside. Reineke: ‘Again, we sought to connect with an unusual, local party. Gore Tengels consists of a huge group of active volunteers who already meet every Friday to work on the quayside garden. On a social level, that is obviously wonderful.’
‘A good and fine neighbourhood is more than just streets and buildings – the people, that’s what it’s all about.’
Reineke Otten (Rotterdam Architecture Month)
Together with and for local residents
In addition to various collaborations with local partners and makers, connecting with local residents is important for the festival heart. ‘In oud-Schiemond, there is very close-knit community with many residents who have lived there since the beginning,’ says Reineke. ‘Many well-known footballers come from there. We tried to approach them through various existing networks, such as the Groene Connectie. Very quickly, the idea was born to create a photo book, so that we could show the neighbourhood through the eyes of its residents. In addition, some residents will play a role in the catering at the festival heart by selling baked goods. A good and fine neighbourhood is more than just streets and buildings – the people, that’s what it’s all about.’
The stage in various stages of construction
Placetesting and placemaking
What will happen to the place when the festival heart moves away after RA Month? Can the interventions create something lasting? Reineke: ‘Normally, we land somewhere with RA Month, set it up and take it down again. This year we are doing a lot more ‘placetesting’ and ‘placemaking’. All the interventions have been designed and built to last for at least five years. I hope that we will have created an important place where Rotterdammers will continue to go after RA Month. That they take ownership, and continue to build on the urban and social fabric – which was already there, but we have hopefully helped to strengthen.’
Rune: ‘This whole area is full of activity and connections; it really is a hotbed. You often see these qualities come under pressure when an area is developed commercially. The beauty of what we do in the festival heart is that we bring people together and show that this is where the difference is already being made in the many transitions we face. In terms of DNA, this area matches the municipality’s Paris Proof ambitions, and has real future value.
After RA Month, I hope, and we wrote this in our manifesto, that people in the surrounding neighbourhoods have found each other, and can make each other’s lives easier by giving something to each other. And in doing so, giving everyone’s life a better future.’
