from "What Do You Need?", Team1010 (2018)

^{IABR–Atelier Rotterdam}

Formerly a major global fruit transition hub, the Merwe-Vierhavens district is now transforming into a completely new residential and commercial area. M4H is one of the areas highlighted in the City Harbor Program – a program by the City of Rotterdam and the Port of Rotterdam aimed at realizing distinct living and working conditions in the city’s harbor areas in the coming decades.
M4H is in a strategic location: next to vulnerable residential areas, such as the Delfshaven and Bospolder-Tussendijken neighborhoods; in the middle of an economically active port area and yet close to the city center; and opposite the knowledge campus RDM Rotterdam on the other side of the river.

The City and the Port have launched the Rotterdam Makers District, which includes M4H and the RDM and is expected to become the hub of the innovative manufacturing industry in the Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Region. And with good reason: the old industrial buildings, the sheer size of M4H, and the fresh dynamics arising there offer many opportunities for the development of new residential and commercial typologies, of innovative maker spaces, of test facilities, and of knowledge platforms. Connecting the area to the surrounding neighborhoods (M4H+) presents an opportunity to create new jobs and to provide the ‘working population of the twenty-first century’ with new expertise and skills. And that is necessary if the goal is an inclusive city with an economy that adds local value to the city and empowers its inhabitants.

As studies by IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, The Productive City (2016)and What Do You Need? (2018), demonstrate, M4H is a fine example of an area where the gap between high-tech and low-tech, thinking and creating, and living and working can be bridged, and where the circular economy can be explored and developed in very concrete ways.

M4H: Makers District

^{foto: Mariska Vogel}

Test Site M4H+: Pilot Project and Showcase
As its proprietors, the City of Rotterdam and the Port of Rotterdam together face the challenge of making this city harbor area future proof. The aim is to generate concrete development principles and pilot projects, and therefore the IABR, the City of Rotterdam, and the Port Authority have established Test Site M4H+ in 2018.
The Test Site M4H+ takes spatial design and integrality as its premise. There are many challenges in and around the M4H area. Here, the energy transition and social issues inevitably link up with challenges in the fields of circular economy, the (small) manufacturing industry, and food and water management. The transformation of both the M4H area and of the directly surrounding neighborhoods has to be addressed in one single urban project: researching, imagining, designing, and testing with the essential energy transition as leverage and spatial design as the instrument.

Test Site M4H+

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

You'll Never Make Alone
In the coming years, we will research, design and test plans for circular area development in collaboration with local stakeholders in M4H and in the surrounding neighborhoods. Test Site M4H+ will be a pilot project and showcase for the solutions needed to optimally integrate the space that the old port economy has left behind in what will become the resilient Rotterdam of the future.

Test Site M4H+ is a collaboration of IABR, PBM4H, the City of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority.

For the Test Site M4H+, the IABR-Atelier Rotterdam carried out research in 2018 into what a "circular area development" is or can mean for the area, and what conditions and coalitions are needed to get this going. The research, What Do You Need?, conducted by Team1010, provides insight into promising flows, in involved parties and companies, and into the missing links that must be addressed for a circular future of M4H. The IABR also proposed guiding principles for a sustainable transition, which were translated and integrated into the Spatial Framework that was approved by the Municipality of Rotterdam and the Port Authority in early 2019.

^{One of eight guiding principles for sustainable area development as advanced by Team1010 / IABR–Atelier Rotterdam}

What's next?
The M4H Program Office (PBM4H) has witnessed strong interest among companies and knowledge institutions to develop M4H effectively as a testing ground for the next economy. Parties see M4H as a learning environment, a research object and a subject for debate. Some are already active in the area, such as the Keilecollectief and Studio Makkink & Bey. Many connections are made, but always the question arises: how does M4H really become a learning environment? How do you develop, care for and disseminate existing and new knowledge and skills, and how do you use them specifically for the development of the area itself, how do you involve relevant parties, and how do you get to concrete action?
PBM4H finds that there is currently a specific need for a connector, for a platform that connects programmatically, signals themes and/or challenges, and activates knowledge development based on these observations. What PBM4H deems necessary is an independent platform with a proven trackrecord when it comes to connecting different stakeholders, knowledge and research results, that knows how to put assignments on the agenda of officials and administrators, private parties and communities in situ, and how to commit parties to the results and their implementation.

IABR moves to the Keilepand
IABR, naturally, remains enthusiastic about the possibilities that the Test Site M4H+ offers, now and in the longer term. And it decided to walk the talk, in 2020 it will move its offices to the Keilepand, centrally located in M4H.

Keilepand

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

The area offers challenges that fit in perfectly with the ambition of the IABR to work concretely and locally, in Rotterdam, while productively combining its mission with its functions as an international platform and as a research & development institution.
As a research platform, IABR is keen to continue a multi-year process in and with all parties in the M4H area and to keep it going while "learning to area-develop by doing": i.e. advance a practice of result-oriented area development in a learning environment. This relates directly to one of the key questions that IABR–2020 asks: can we, as city-makers, think carefully about how we do it and for whom we do it, while we're actually doing it?

Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey

^{picture: Fred Ernst}

IABR–2020–Co-Curators M4H+
It is therefore in close consultation with PBM4H that IABR has appointed Rianne Makkink and Jurgen Bey (Studio Makkink & Bey, based in M4H) as IABR–2020–Co-Curators Water as Leverage with a specific brief for the Test Site M4H+. They are to advance the platform referred to above and present the results at IABR–2020. The central question they will explore is how to move from knowledge development to concrete action, how to make M4H a truly interactive learning environment, where the development, preservation and dissemination of expertise can be utilized for the actual development of the area.
The guiding principles from the Spatial Framework, developed by the IABR-Atelier Rotterdam, will serve as a point of reference when Makkink and Bey, of course in close collaboration with the other curators of IABR–2020, the IABR, PBM4H and key players in the area, will explore and visualize what future for M4H we can want.
Click here to read more about the results: WATERSCHOOL M4H+

Test Site M4H+ is a collaboration of IABR, PBM4H, the City of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority.

In 2018, and in the context of IABR–Atelier Rotterdam, Team1010 examined ways to take the next step in M4H’s transformation into a breeding ground for the circular manufacturing industry at IABR–Test Site M4H+.
How can area development in M4H contribute to Rotterdam’s ambitious goals to realize a fully circular society with closed material cycles by 2050? Which test projects and which coalitions can help this development take shape? And how can sustainable area development be combined with the position of Rotterdam as a global port, and, as such, a hub for the huge amount of raw materials, waste, and semi-finished products that traverse the region? In a circular economy, these flows will have to be shortened, valorized, and eventually closed. The degree to which this is achieved depends on local capacities, skills, people, and places. So, what will it take?

M4H+

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

What do you need?
For its research, commissioned by IABR, the City and the Port of Rotterdam, Team1010 took the drive and strength of the parties that are already active in the area as its starting point. Entrepreneurs were first asked about their ‘maker story,’ ‘growth story,’ and ‘circular story,’ and subsequently about their aspirations: What do you need for your company to flourish in the circular economy? The – extensive – talks with stakeholders and experts continued during IABR–2018, when three circular chains – the agrifood & biohub, the building materials bank, and a textile refinery – were investigated to identify concrete opportunities.

Growing towards a biobased economy

^{Image: Team1010}

In June 2019, the publication Wat Heb Je Nodig? (What Do You Need?) was presented, in which Team1010 demonstrates how a city harbor like M4H can in fact develop into a breeding ground for a circular manufacturing industry. By actively forging coalitions and stimulating the debate in the area, the team furthermore made the taking of further steps possible. It also developed a methodology that is applicable in other locations, a method that aims to address the missing link between ambitions and their realization, and thus to help bridge the gap between plans and projects.

Textiles: preserving values, creating jobs

^{Image: Team1010}

Guiding Principles and Spatial Framework
The results of the research will find their way to implementation in various ways. We identified concrete opportunities for projects, pilots, and additional collaboration in the M4H area to which the City and the Port of Rotterdam as well as the entrepreneurs in the area can contribute. And the Guiding Principles formulated as part of Team1010’s research were included as a guideline in the Ruimtelijk Raamwerk (Spatial Framework), the city’s guiding framework for the development of M4H in the coming years. And for good reason: the Principles promote mutually shared values for policy and development in M4H and are aimed at achieving a progressively more circular, inclusive, and sustainable future.

The publication Wat Heb Je Nodig?(only available in Dutch!) can be ordered in the IABR–web shop.
Still available in our webshop is The Productive City – Development Perspectives for a Regional Manufacturing Economy in which the Atelier Rotterdam identifies opportunities for the future of the Metropole Region Rotterdam The Hague from the perspective of the next economy. Click here for more info or to order the book.

Test Site M4H+ is a collaboration of IABR, PBM4H, the City of Rotterdam and the Rotterdam Port Authority.
The research by design for Test Site M4H+ has been carried out by TEAM1010, consisting of 1010au, Mariska Vogel en Ronald Van Der Heijden, under the umbrella of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam.