ZUS. 18 Years in the Unfinished R’dam

Rotterdam, port of Europe, with its constantly changing spaces and an atmosphere of incompleteness, is the “city of the permanent temporary.” At least for those who have spent a lifetime rethinking its spaces and creating new places.

Utopian Hours brings to Turin the experience of ZUS – Zones Urbaines Sensibles, a studio active since the 2000s with many experimental placemaking and architectural projects. The best known and most eye-catching is a pedestrian bridge, a 400-meter walkway capable of reconnecting, and regenerating, three areas just on the edge of the city center.

The Luchtsingel, that is the name of the project, has many qualities that make it unique: it is the first public infrastructure financed through a crowdfunding campaign, it is made of wood, and it is colored bright yellow.

The intervention is a success and shows well the unconventional philosophy, at play between public and private, ready to adapt to the evolutions of the space, brought by the studio of Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman.

Recently, the firm’s 18 years of activism and design came together in a book, City of Permanent Temporality: Incomplete & Unfinished. The co-founder comes to Utopian Hours with a new project.