The theme explores large-scale interiority, urbanism, and the re-use of a vacant industrial building in the Port of Rotterdam called the Submarine Wharf – originally a covered slipway for making submarines. The building and its location outside the city posed an array of challenges inherent to the repurposing of very large buildings in decentralised, industrial urban areas. This is MIARD’s second project focusing on the Port of Rotterdam after the 2013 thematic project and exhibition Post-Port: Obsolete Typologies in the Port of Rotterdam.

Questions were raised, such as: What is the future of these industrial factories and warehouses? What types of programmes would work to bring people to remote areas? Which factors increase human population and density in cities? What economies could thrive in these locations? Can highly specific micro-communities/cities be a source of revitalisation? And what if we use the remits of urbanism to make and populate the interior? How is the practice and body of knowledge of the interior altered, if it expands in a multidisciplinary sphere?