Between Representation and Experience: Rotterdam through Six Postcards Part 1 Dissertation 2024 Alexandre Langlois Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | UK This dissertation examines the reconstruction of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, following its aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe on the 14th of May, 1940. The discussion is guided by six postcards depicting the city from the 1950s and ‘60s, a period of time characterised by dynamic urban change and modernising visions for the port city. Rather than accepting a prevailing narrative of reconstruction, this study interrogates six distinct optical fragments of the city in order to mobilise spatial, non-linear histories. Each postcard image, animated by writing influenced by the methods of Walter Benjamin, acts as an aperture through which to view Rotterdam’s reconstruction, and as discussion swiftly escapes the boundaries of the postcard, space is given to engage with the memories permeating the city’s urban fabric and stored in circulating images. Written findings are translated into visual form through an engagement with Gert Jan Kocken’s cartographic composite: Depictions of Rotterdam 1940- 1945. Drawing both from and into his work, each chapter probes its layered density of past, present and future narratives. This allows the six postcards – each with implicit narratives spurred by their depicted views – to bring to the fore specific historical moments, urban structures and memories of loss and reconstruction. Alexandre Langlois Tutor(s) Ella Chmielewska