Bridge the collective memory: Urban living room design for historical city center of Dordrecht

The graduation project is about transforming the vacant V&D department store building in Dordrecht into an new urban living room. One sentence to conclude the background is: Revitalizing the obsolete. What happens to the traditional twentieth century commercial areas in major Dutch cities in an era that everyone is shopping online? The result is many physical stores, including my site-famous Dutch retail company V&D, closed down and left many empty holes in Dutch city centers. These vacant buildings, which used to have close interactions with Dutch citizens’ urban life, are not accessible anymore and are gradually segregated from the vibrant urban life. They are urgently in need to transform to rescue the livability. The value of the heritage buildings will be the starting point of the redesign process: restore the previous identity, responding to its historical events, and capturing the core values as the redesign concept. The building was used as an interior gathering space for almost one century and became part of the urban routing. In addition, the building is located in the prime area inside the historical city center and surrounded by the typical urban fabric consists of canal&bridge. Therefore, I would like to extend the public characteristics and make the building an extension of the public space. To create a similar spatial experience inside the building, ‘bridge’ is used as the main spatial concept for the interior design.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Heritage & Architectur