Expedition courtyards form the hidden back of Rotterdam city centre: part of the post-war city block where living, working and shopping were interwoven in new ways. The courtyards form a circuit of supply roads and transhipment spaces. Due to new logistics means and economic shift from goods to services, the expedition function has partly disappeared and the courtyards look abandoned; this calls for a reassessment. The search for new perspectives for the shipping courtyards started with the graduation project ‘Expedition Rotterdam’. The spatial logic of this typically Rotterdam phenomenon was further explored in the publication ‘Machinekamers - Typology of the Rotterdam expedition courtyard’. Followed by a public expedition walk, exhibition in NAi Bookshop and debate ‘Stadsproject Expeditiepark’ during Stadmakerscongres-2020.

Since 2023, we have been working on a manual and a pilot project around making these courtyards more climate-adaptive on behalf of the municipality of Rotterdam within the Rotterdams Weerwoord program.