MVRDV revealed its design for a temporary intervention that takes tourists and city dwellers on a walk across several rooftops in Rotterdam, highlighting an untapped potential for expanding the public realm. Created in collaboration with Rotterdam Rooftop Days, the project will feature an aerial bridge from the roof of The Bijenkorf department store to the top of the World Trade Centre plinth and will be available to the public from May 26 to June 24 2022, during Rotterdam Architecture Month.
.jpg?1640166431 "Stairs of Kriterion, temporary rooftop intervention. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
The Rotterdam Rooftop Walk will begin alongside the sunken shopping street Koopgoot from which staircases will lead visitors up on a series of rooftop terraces. There, they will find educational displays and demonstrations, as the project provides companies and non=profit organisations with the opportunity of showcasing innovations related to greening, energy generation, and water storage. The path will provide access to the open patios on top of De Bijenkorf Department Store Complex designed by Marcel Breuer in 1957, from which staircases will lead visitors back to ground level.
The project aims to showcase how rooftops can provide an added layer of public infrastructure in a dense city where public space is scarce. MVRDV previously experimented with this type of rooftop intervention in 2016 with the Stairs of Kriterion installation, a temporary staircase leading to the roof of a prominent building in Rotterdam, which attracted more than 365,000 visitors in four weeks.
After the Stairs, we wanted a follow-up with stairs and bridges so that a larger collection of rooftops is accessible, making it possible to imagine a second layer, a superstructure in the city above the rooftops. In fact, we already intended to do it during the Eurovision Song Contest, and then celebrate the winners in an opera-like arrangement. That plan couldn't go ahead because of the coronavirus, but luckily it can happen now! I think it's great that this project will be realised, thanks to Rotterdam Rooftop Days and the city. - MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas
Largely rebuilt after WWII, Rotterdam features 18.5 square kilometres of mostly empty flat roofs, which hold the potential for creating a multi-layered urban environment, allowing the city to continue developing inward. Earlier this year, MVRDV, together with Rotterdam Rooftop Days and the Municipality of Rotterdam, produced the Rooftop Catalogue, a collection of 130 innovative ideas that make use of the city's rooftops, showcasing how this untapped spatial resource can help with issues such as land scarcity and climate change while also producing energy, food and nurturing a healthy and lively urban environment.
