West 8

West 8 is an urban planning and landscape architecture firm founded by Adriaan Geuze and Paul van Beek in the Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1987. It is known for its contemporary designs and innovative solutions to urban planning problems using lighting, metal structures, and color. Van Beek is no longer part of the firm.

Geuze founded West 8 in 1987 in Rotterdam with Paul van Beek, who later left the firm. Geuze won the Dutch Maaskant Award for young architects in 1987 and the firm grew to employ more than 75 architects and planners, with offices in Rotterdam and New York City. The firm has produced several striking designs and is part of a wave of Dutch architects doing major works that have received international attention and recognition for novel design approaches.

Geuze was born in Dordrecht in 1960 and graduated with a degree in landscape architecture from the University of Wageningen in 1987. Geuze's 1993 essay "Accelerating Darwin" advocated a "sensation of spontaneous culture which the city dweller creates". One of the firm's best known projects is the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam (1996) using a raised platform lit from below and incorporating crane like structure to support lights that can be moved by inserting coins in a slot, "literally empowering the individual to light the square as they see fit." At the Oosterscheldedam Flood Barrier (1994) the firm used black and white striped mussel shells as art and landscape, and at the Carrascoplein in Amsterdam (1998) they converted a "forgotten place" beneath viaducts into a parking lot of abstract patterns with patches of green space with illumination of the viaduct soffits creating a "Ballardian urban park." West 8 developed masterplans for the Ypenburg Vinex showing that they can "marshal large plots and world-class architects with assurance", and produced a provocative design with palm trees in the sky plan for Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, in 2002, and won a 2003 competition for an urban plan in Tromsø, Norway.

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