Tour
Wild in West
An exploratory walk through the interstitial landscapes and urban wilds of Rotterdam West
How wild do we allow it to be? Join us on an exploratory field trip through the hidden landscapes of Rotterdam West.
During this midsummer walk, we move along grassy verges, forgotten railway tracks, allotment gardens, infrastructural edges and ruderal urban nature between Spangen and M4H. Rather than a conventional guided tour, this is a journey through spaces that often go unnoticed: places between infrastructure, industry and landscape, where spontaneous ecologies, informal routes and alternative forms of use have emerged.
Along the way, landscape architect Laura Vos and musician Matthijs Lievaart open up new ways of seeing and listening to these environments. Using the field guide Rotterdam Left-overs, we explore how these interstitial spaces function, what kinds of ecologies emerge there, and what questions they raise about design, accessibility and urban nature. How wild can the city become? And what can designers learn from landscapes that were never fully designed?
The route starts near Marconiplein in Spangen, continues through the Singelpark and the allotment garden association Streven naar Verbetering, where a small exhibition will be on display, before returning along the abandoned Spoordijk Spangen towards the ruderal landscapes of the tidal park in M4H. The walk ends at the Keilepand during Rotterdam Architecture Month.
Meeting point: entrance of Spoordijk Spangen (51.913966, 4.431166). Please wear sturdy shoes; parts of the route are unpaved and difficult to access. Includes a free copy of the field guide Rotterdam Left-overs. Registration via: event@stadsparkwest.nl
Speaker
Laura Vos is a landscape architect graduated from TU Delft, with a background in architecture and ecology. In her graduation research under Saskia de Wit, she explored Rotterdam’s hidden interstitial landscapes and the spontaneous urban nature that emerges in the spaces between infrastructure, industry and the city.