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HYPERBODY Vertical Studio | Rotterdam EXPO 2025 | Fall Semester 2015 - 2016
TEAM: Kas Oosterhuis | Henriette Bier | Nimish Biloria | Sina Mostafavi | Gary Chang | Vera Lászlo | Ana Anton | Serban Bodea | Marco Galli
Societal Context
Rotterdam World Expo 2025 (description from http://rotterdam2025.nl/en/#/) anticipates an upcoming energy transition and a shift towards a circular economy: Rotterdam is preparing a bid to host the World Expo in 2025, an event that tackles global problems through innovation and cultural exchange. World Expo Rotterdam 2025 supports the move towards a new sustainable reality. A reality in which we restore and preserve what we have. The key question we want to ask businesses, governments and communities involved is: how do we create an economy that is not only greener and more resilient, but also fairer? For this reason, the theme of World Expo Rotterdam 2025 is Changing Currents. One of the proposed sub-themes is Deltas in Transition. As a delta city, Rotterdam can show the world how it links its green ambitions to a strong economy.
The desire to build green and resilient societies is a key reason for organizing the World Expo Rotterdam 2025 on available space in the heart of the city. Our plan is to host over a hundred country pavilions that showcase their solutions for a sustainable economy in a world of finite resources. Everyone is invited to visit these pavilions: young and old, locals and cosmopolitans, entrepreneurs and tourists.
Urban Context
The site for the MSc 1&3 project is Rotterdam’s delta. For this site the students will use a specific dataset, containing the following:
50 million visitors
opening 1 May - 31 October 2025
incoming people flow by car, train, taxi, bus, water, air, etc.
crowd control using attractors, repellers, dynamic space dividers
Students will analyse site along the river delta and implement research on contemporary societal challenges in order to make proposals for programmatic uses such as that address both. Topics of interest may be building and transportation on water, intensive (instead of extensive) space use or could connect with deciphering novel concepts customized for the kind of pavilion structure envisioned by the group: ranging from response to the port of Rotterdam and its current state, showcasing the economic strength of Netherlands such as the flower sector, the water management sector, greenhouse concentrations, renewable energy sector, cultural diversity etc. Students organize (with tutors’ help) presentations at M4H / Expo 2025 both at mid-term and final presentation to representatives of the Expo 2025 team.
