Te Huur

Team Point of View

Leeuwarden is a beautiful city that does not need anything else than the definition of an approach able to combine the promotion of the city centre and the involvement of the citizens in this process. Through a careful investigation of the current living condition, the project proposes a bottom-up strategy that, starting from the problems related to the depopulation process of the centre, will be able to reactivate the urban core. Only reviving the centre, the shops will have a market; the services will have users; the tourists a context to visit.
In a shrinking city there is definitely no need to built new dwellings. The vacancies are a resource to define new ways to inhabit and work. The models offered by the sharing economy clearly define an alternative and more resilient pattern for the requalification of the areas. The sharing of the space is a useful tool to create the condition for start-ups, co-workings, and other programs.
The peer-to-peer economies represent as well an instrument to tackle the need of new accommodation for tourists, during the year when Leeuwarden is the European Capital of Culture and the following ones.
What we expect is the occupation in the short term of the vacant spaces through a wide catalogue of possible activities and the stabilization in the long term of this weak system trough the energies of the inhabitants, who have decided to invest in this city.

Jury Point of View

This unique project tackles with a clever approach the problems Leeuwarden is facing. The plan visualises the city’s ambition of being progressive and it is very –perhaps excessively– concentrated. The proposal’s strength is its intelligent understanding of the assignment on different levels: the age group that Leeuwarden needs to support a dynamic environment, a novel interpretation of the Existenzminimum (subsistence level) for that group, and the potential economic value of the vacant spaces in the area.