West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture BV
Completed 1996
Schouwburgplein (Theater Square) in Rotterdam binds the urban space around it through its own void. What appears to be empty is full of activity and the energy of change. The materiality of the square is deployed as an organizational feature as much as an aesthetic expression. The ground plane is elevated 14 inches above a car park, creating a broad stage that echoes the main buildings of the square; a concert hall, city theater and multiplex cinema. Taking a clue from the function of the area, the square itself calls the public to perform in innumerable ways, through day and night and across seasons. The flat plane allows the surface materials to be magnified in their careful juxtaposition as they define specific zones that heighten physical awareness of people as they inhabit the square. The flatness recalls agricultural patterning of the Dutch countryside while its emptiness releases an urban experience of spontaneous interaction, distinct, sudden and fleeting.
The design of Schouwburgplein uses light, both natural and artificial as a material source of meaning. The considered placement of materials is associated with fugitive daylight while at night the light is layered and embedded in the activity of the square. Green illumination from under the pavement amplifies the floating quality of the square while fragments of these same lights turn white and brighten into a picture of the milky way. The ventilation towers and the theaters themselves cast different characters of light. The most dramatic element of the square are the four hydraulic lighting masts. By day their sculptural presence recalls to the cranes of the Rotterdam shipyards in their mechanic animal bodies. As the sun goes down they can be adjusted by users to illuminate any activity below, sweeping wide or narrowly focused. Like the surface materials, light performs as both object and subject in the generation of meaning. These physical and transient elements are situated to activate civic discourse through gesture, invitation, and opportunity.
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