Cinema Architecture

Together with the involved speaker E.T.C. Dee (activist and researcher, he made an interactive map on the website https://maps.squat.net/ where European squats are precisely located, classified and described), we selected five short movies made by squatters during the last thirty years in Rotterdam. The videos presented stories of buildings, such as Fietsenfabriek, Schieblok, Holland Amerika Lijn (known as Hotel New York), and people, part of an ‘alternative’ design processes. Our introduction was based on the study between the evolution of the building areas and general plans of Rotterdam. This comparative study demonstrated how the ‘urban sensibility’ of the squatters was able to discover abandoned buildings that are now located in the prominent parts of the city. Kraken in Rotterdam is the title of one of the presented videos.