Interview with Adriaan Geuze

As part of the 15th annual nationwide festival of Architectural Day, Dutch architect Adriaan Geuze visited Brno on Monday, October 6, 2025, to present to a wide audience the project for a new train station, in which his landscape architecture office West 8 collaborated with Rotterdam specialists in transport infrastructure Benthem Crouwel and the local studio A8000 from České Budějovice. The winning proposal emerged from a three-round international competition in the summer of 2021, when a total of fifty offices competed for the project. The contract is currently in the phase of selecting a general designer, and construction of the new station is expected to begin in 2028, but visitors can already walk through a virtual reality experience, which is freely accessible to the public twice a week in Pavilion H at the Brno Exhibition Centre. This unique computer simulation, which spans an area of 25x30 meters and can be explored freely, aims to closely resemble the experiences of a new urban district that is not expected to be completed until the following decade.
The afternoon tour was followed by an evening lecture titled "Infrastructure as Cultural Heritage," which took place at the creative hub KUMST. Here, Adriaan Geuze presented not only the Brno station project but also the completed modifications of the waterfront in the center of Madrid and the main train station in his hometown of Rotterdam. While the first project transformed a busy thoroughfare along a dry riverbed into an attractive public park and returned the Manzanares River back to the residents of the Spanish capital, the Rotterdam station is closely linked to the social, cultural, and economic aspects of the second-largest city in the Netherlands. Both projects demonstrate that a relationship can be built with transport infrastructure and not merely viewed through a technocratic lens, as was the case with most similar structures in the 19th century.
Before the lecture began, we had the opportunity to ask Adriaan Geuze a few questions regarding not only current projects and his academic work but also to uncover the origin of the name West 8.

In our country, architecture and landscape design were taught separately at different universities. This is now gradually changing. You also studied at the agricultural university in Wageningen, then spent many years at Harvard University, and now, since 2022, you have been a professor at Delft University of Technology. How does the teaching of landscape architecture proceed there?
When I joined the Delft University of Technology two years ago, I asked the rector and the dean if I could cross and connect the boundaries between civil engineering, water management, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, and ecology. One of the goals is to create one shared campus at TU Delft. Of course, we need specialists, but we also need people who can navigate across various fields. We recently launched a project called Q5. It involves an additional semester in which all TU Delft students should spend one semester in a different faculty. Students shouldn’t become nerds. It is fine if they love their field, but it is also necessary for them to spend at least one semester in a different environment and meet different people. Crossing boundaries is also how I work outside academic grounds.

One should not look at a problem from a single angle but enrich solutions with multiple perspectives.
We established our firm thirty years ago, where urbanism, infrastructure, landscape, and ecology represent a single shared task. In our office, there are no boundaries between these fields.

Twenty years ago, as the curator of the 2nd Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, you chose the main theme “Water,” which is a crucial element for the Dutch as a large part of your territory lies below sea level.
Water represents the main issue in the Netherlands. Without effective water management, we could not exist.

It is a matter of survival.
The Dutch know how to settle land even where it would otherwise be impossible, such as in swamps or on the sea. Dutch culture does not revolve around writing, philosophy, music, or something similar, but around land creation. We focus on water, which the Dutch see as their enemy. The creation of land can be considered our “national epic.”

Now, I would like to focus on the project of the new main train station in Brno. What was the biggest challenge?
Let’s analyze that. I perceive Brno as a cultural metropolis with a great resonance. When you look at the city, you see layers of historical, cultural, and political significance. Brno is located at the very heart of Europe, where influences from surrounding countries overlap. The term cultural village signifies for us the strongest European tradition, which does not differ much from that in Florence, Grenoble, or Barcelona. That is also why we love Europe so much. Currently, an international connection is planned that will run from Scandinavia through Berlin to Italy. This will also include Prague, Brno, and Vienna. The result should be a large terminal or hub. From the name alone, you can sense a technical function. However, Brno should not end up as an ordinary terminal, as happened at the main station in Vienna, where there is nothing but asphalt, wide boulevards without trees. There are only airport hotels and car rentals. Upon entering the station hall, you encounter a McDonald's. It is a windy and cold place where you are surrounded by buildings made of glass and steel. You no longer feel like you are in Vienna or in the cultural heart of Austria. The price that the residents of Vienna paid for their main station was too high. And I am not just talking about finances.
In the case of Brno, an important urban plan emerged after a hundred years of discussions regarding where the new station should be and became a priority for the city. The new station will be located 500 meters from the historical center in a new district that meets the conditions of the 21st century. We are considering how the station could represent another layer that will be friendly to this overall concept. Our winning proposal is also very simple, clear, and friendly. It is a place where people will feel comfortable and not like at an airport, which is overcrowded with commerce and security restrictions.

At what stage were you invited to the project?
Michal Sedláček, the chief architect of Brno, developed an urban project with his team featuring the newly situated station. He incorporated the river, the historic viaduct, and connected the new district with the urban boulevard featuring the dominant St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. When we were invited, the basic plan was already completed, and we could use it to our advantage.

But you collaborated with the studio Benthem Crouwel from the very beginning on the design. In our country, the surroundings are often addressed only after the project is completed, and it is also an item that is often the first to be removed from the project during completion.
We formed a consortium and worked together from the very beginning. Therefore, the project is not divided between offices. Otherwise, our studio is not only involved in shaping landscapes, but also in building infrastructure, utilitarian architecture, and climate adaptation projects.

Finally, I have a question that you have probably answered many times, but I could not find the origin of the name West 8 in any publication.
With my partner Paul van Beek, we opened the office at the end of the 80s. We did not want the names of the founding partners to appear in the title. On the contrary, we wanted to present ourselves as a community, where people after years of work could say that they are part of a shared brand and not feel like they are working under someone else's name. We knew that the name had to be short and internationally understandable. At the same time, we wanted it to be connected to a Dutch story. In the Netherlands, we often battle the sea. To keep water where it is meant to be, we have created a comprehensive system of dikes. In the past, when strong storms came from the west in winter, weather forecasts announced a danger level. When the highest level, West 8, was declared, people would go out to check the dikes to ensure they were not damaged and would survive the storm unscathed. The name of the office derives from the strong wind blowing from the Atlantic, which the Dutch fear greatly along with high water levels.

This could also be perceived as you bringing fresh air not only to Dutch architecture but now also to the Czech environment.