1977 - 1985

Zevenkamp

1977 - 1985

Zevenkamp

The spatial structure of Zevenkamp was straight-lined and strict, intending to create a robust framework in which variation could be introduced. The features of the existing landscape formed the organizing principle: a deep grassy polder with regular parcellation and straight ditches.

Location

Rotterdam

Client

Abma+Hazewinkel+Dirks, Architectuur en Planning

Year
1977 - 1985

In Zevenkamp, the designers decided, following the hydraulic filling of the construction site, to re-excavate the Ommoord Ditch, which divided the district from east to west; to widen it drastically and to employ it as a basis for the direction of the parcellation. At right angles to this structure, 2.6-m-high imitation dikes with sleek poplar avenues were realized. These curious structures – hydrologically useless, as they had no damming function – transect the area from north to south and connect two smaller parks and the 1,700-m-long district park, the Wollefoppenpark, to one another.

In contrast to the cultivated green of the district, Wollefoppenpark has the informal character of an urban periphery, with different use and arrangement of the landscape: a grassland park, wood-like park, nature garden, allotment complex, sports fields and riding stables – open and closed spaces with a wide variety of ambiences. Existing farming activities are retained and included in the park. Cohesion is attained using long avenues, each featuring a different tree species. They repeat the recessing of the district periphery, and a system of ditches and rectangular basins on three different drainage levels.

‘There was no need to introduce a language of forms other than a straight-lined one – and certainly not where the idea was harmonization with the parcellation pattern, the backyards, and how the polder originally was used,’ the designers wrote in 1979.