A harbour on land: De Ceuvel’s topologies of creative reuse

Abstract

In this paper we explore creative reuse as a critical and imaginative mode of urban practice. By engaging with the case of De Ceuvel, an experimental community located in Amsterdam Noord, we submit three main affordances of creative reuse. Reuse value is accordingly discussed in relation to (a) abandonment, (b) the co-constitutive character of experimentation, and (c) the circulation of heterogeneous ideas and materials. In moving beyond circumstances of disposal and dissolution, the three affordances are evocative of a salvage value regime, which transcends conventional narratives of the city and a siloed treatment of urban sustainability. Based on the findings, we suggest that creative reuse interventions enact infrastructures of curatorship, capable of unsettling particular ways of dwelling, learning and narrating the city.