Thanks to the work in which he intervened before the Second World War, Lotte Stam-Beese specialized in urban planning. She was appointed in 1946 director of the Department of Urbanism of the University of Architecture of Amsterdam and made the reconstruction of Rotterdam after the Second World War. Among its urban projects in this city include the reconstructions of Pendrecht and Ommoord districts.
Urban design Pendrecht (1949-1953)
The most outstanding project of Lotte Stam-Beese is its intervention in Pendrecht, one of the southern districts of Rotterdam, started in 1949. The main objective of this project was to organize 6300 houses using a series of spatial categories, which ascends according to their capacity were: housing, group, neighborhood, district and city.
Lotte configures a square that is free of traffic bordered by four neighborhoods. The unit chosen to host the neighborhood units was the so-called Wooneenheid (grouping). Each group has a set of buildings that respond to different needs depending on the type of residents intended to accommodate. We find, therefore, a great social diversity that is reflected in its spatial organization of independent blocks of different heights surrounding a community green space.
For her, the city project was the result of a community and not of an individual. The neighborhood is part of the city, without solution of continuity. This idea is contrary to the idea of "Urban City-Garden", which bet on autonomous neighborhoods connected by commercial axes and equipment.
"The district of Pendrecht as part of the southern expansion of Rotterdam intends to be part of the city as a district. It does not intend to become a garden city or an isolated suburban settlement, where one can withdraw from the hectic life of the city. Pendrecht has an urban population formed by citizens".
Lotte Stam-Beese
However, in 1960, by political decision forced to intensify the construction in the cities, resulting in an excessive proliferation of high-rise districts without concern for social relations or formal proportions. In the following years, large areas of Pendrecht will be demolished and low-cost social housing will be replaced by more expensive properties.
The districts of Ommoord (1962-1977)
The Ommoord districts project was the last major development in Rotterdam.
It consists of several low-rise housing around a core of buildings of a much higher height. The high-rise area turns out to be repetitive units, in which each unit is formed by two blocks that are perpendicular to each other creating a common green space between them. The purpose of this placement is to provide the houses with privacy and lines of vision towards the landscape. The trees and bushes located in that common green zone soften the hard lines of the floors and also make the transition between the lawn and the floors.
"Core" was a concept of the sixties that was much discussed among architects and urban planners. They understood a nucleus in which people live together and are involved with each other. That central idea must arise in the economic focal points, where the facilities are linked with the infrastructures. This idea of "core" is an ideal of Stam-Beese.
The districts of Ommoord have a great urban importance thanks to the combination of different heights and their relationship between landscape and architecture. In addition, it is one of the districts where we can still observe the modern ideals of metropolitan housing in green spaces.
