Submarine Channel

Putting architecture back in society. That is the mission of ZUS, a young company led by Elma van Boxtel and Kristian Koreman. One of the ways they communicate their ideas is via so-called “unsolicited recommendations”. Letters to ministers and city councils in which Van Boxtel and Koreman volunteer advice on current urban issues. With such political engagement, these young architects strongly distinguish themselves from the generation before them. Architects like Van Boxtel and Koreman appear to be much more idealistic and much less focused on form and spectacle. Submarine made a short portrait of ZUS for the network company DUTCH DFA.

In 2007 ZUS won the prestigious Maaskant Prize for their continued campaign against the squandering of public space for commercial purposes. They developed a plan to revive an office building in the centre of Rotterdam, that had been empty and unused for almost 2 decades. The Schieblock will be a city laboratory in which different organizations will be working on new ideas for urban transformation in a pragmatic and multidisciplinary way.