re:motion, Sutherland Hussey, Architects, Architecture in Rotterdam, The Netherlands Exhibition

re:motion Sutherland Hussey in Rotterdam

Scottish Exhibition first in Rotterdam, Holland: The Netherlands Architecture Show

post updated 12 August 2023

Architecture Exhibition information by Sutherland Hussey

re:motion by Sutherland Hussey

re:motion Exhibition

Our proposal takes the city of Edinburgh as its test-bed – the capital of Scotland, and a place of rich historic and cultural significance. Our focus of attention is to explore potential new transport systems at the heart of the city in order to test the impact that they might have on our reading of the city and also to bring into question orthodox thinking about how we enter and leave our cities. Our proposal is intended to be as much a provocation about how the nature of the city can change with radical transport interventions.

Up until the 19th century the Edinburgh Old Town and the 18th century Edinburgh New Town were separated by a loch. The great railway builders of the 19th century came along and, with ruthless logic, decided that the best way of introducing a rail network into the city was to fill in the loch and replace it with the main station terminus. This was an extraordinary and yet necessary decision that thereafter changed our reading and understanding of the city.

Since the 19th century other radical decisions about transport have been made. A new airport has been built approximately ten miles from the city centre and a ring road has been built around the centre with the intention of enabling cars to move quickly from one side of the city to the other without impacting on its historic centre. However both of these interventions, whilst impacting on our lives radically in terms of improved mobility, have had little to no impact on the city in the way that the 19th century rail builders had. Furthermore they have both come with a price – trunk roads have emerged as feeders to the airport and the ring road, adding to clogging up the city centre. In terms of sustainability the airport is reliant on the car, taxi and bus connections which bring with it the now critical problems of road congestion and pollution.

Our proposal looks to modes of transport within the heart of the city which require minimum infrastructure and remove the need for secondary transport systems to sustain them. However they would also have a visual impact on the city that would be as radical as the railways of the 19th century and it is this issue that we look to touch upon to ask how far we are prepared to go in order to provide more sustainable alternatives to our current systems.

Read more about this proposal here – re:motion

Sutherland Hussey