Every design for Hoogvliet

Hoogvliet is best known as the dike village that Rotterdam swallowed. Annexed in 1934, together with Pernis and against the fierce wishes of most of its residents, it was rebuilt almost from scratch in the middle of the twentieth century, when thousands of homes went up for the people working in the petrochemical industry along the river. Its history runs much deeper, though: the village was first recorded on 26 May 1326, under the older names Oedenvliet and Odenvliet, and for centuries it was a lordship in its own right.

The Ruigeplaatbosch is where something of the older landscape still feels close. This woodland on the Oude Maas, at the western tip of the borough, lies beside the Arboretum Hoogvliet and looks out towards the Spijkenisser Eurobruggen and the Oude Spijkenisserbrug, the crossings that carry the road on to Spijkenisse. Nearer the centre, a handful of old buildings around the Dorpskerk are all that remain of the original village, while the Binnenban shopping centre stands where the village core used to be.

If you grew up between Zalmplaat, Oudeland and Tussenwater, riding metro lines C and D into town, the map of Hoogvliet is a map of your own childhood routes.