Description by Design

The phenomenon of epiphany forms the basis for the design method presented in this project. Applied as a case study in the heart of Rotterdam, the process leads to a series of interventions, means of activation for spatial awareness in the public space.

"Description by Design" focuses on the process of discovering a specific location by using the design as a description tool. The initial recognition of the existing environment with all its layers is then enriched with the subjectivity of the designer. As a surrealist archaeologist, he digs up hidden compositions and details to develop a parallel reality. By means of collages and with the help of historical analogies, a second nature of the place is put in the spotlight. The analogies stimulate the collective memory and form the pattern for the physical transformation of the location. Although the design uses an external frame of reference, the internal content and the existing components of the location are the ingredients of its materialization. The daily user, 'everyman', becomes the intermediary between meaning and experience, between reality and interpretation.\nIn the purely commercial center of Rotterdam, the "Rotterdam Epiphanies" appear, moments of recognition of the environment which is at the same time difficult to read and an icon of progress. The designed interventions, located at the crossing between Coolsingel, Hoogstraat and Beurstraverse, result from the designer's recognition of unseen medieval ingredients within a modern body. This contradictory identity is revealed through the manipulation of existing compositions and the treatment of site-specific material and symbols. The user turns away for a moment from the commercial environment and recognizes it as a place, and as an opportunity for appropriation and use.\nSpecific and everyday, argumented and speculative, the components of this project are placed in confrontation to renew and enrich the existing content of urban environments. Just as the surrealists reacted to the worn-out content of their time through a systematic rearrangement of its components, the designer is able to generate striking revelations affecting the contemporary viewer, and in this way recognize the potential for constant renewal in existing environments loading and reloading places with meaning.