Rotterdam: The Latest Architecture and News

MoederscheimMoonen Architects has been given the go-ahead for construction of a new training complex for Rotterdam’s leading football club, Feyenoord. Located in the new Stadionpark district, the grounds of the new complex will occupy a relatively secluded site within the larger sports, housing, and retail master plan—which will include OMA’s new stadium—allowing the technical staff and football team to work in train in privacy from the start of the 2018-2019 season.

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MVRDV’s public Art Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen has broken ground on the northern edge of Rotterdam’s Museumpark in the heart of the city’s cultural campus. The 15,000-square-meter reflective vessel will store the esteemed collection of over 70,000 art and design objects, adding a new cultural landmark to join the nearby Kunsthal, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Chabot Museum and Sonneveld House.

Officially breaking ground this past Friday, the BREEAM Excellent-planned “Collection Building” will combine restoration facilities, exhibition spaces, offices, logistics, a bar, restaurant, public roof terrace and private collectors facilities alongside a specially commissioned atrium that will allow visitors to experience 90% of the collection, including artworks in storage.

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OMA has released images of their masterplan for Feyenoord City, Rotterdam, after the plan was approved by city’s mayor and alderman. Developed for the Feyenoord football club, the project will consist of a redeveloped mixed-use district centered around a new 63,000 seat stadium for the team located along the Maas River.

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Molenaar & Co architecten (Rotterdam), Hebly Theunissen architecten (Delft), and landscape architect Michael van Gessel (Amsterdam) have won the 2016 World Monuments Fund/ Knoll Modernism Prize for the preservation and rehabilitation of the Justus van Effen complex in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Originally designed by Michiel Brinkman in 1919-1921 and completed in 1922, the Justus van Effen complex is a strong example of the ideals embodied in the modern movement, particularly with its use of an elevated “street” as a means of facilitating social cohesion, which became very influential for subsequent generations of designers. 

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In the canon of great Dutch architects sit a number of renowned practitioners, from Berlage to Van Berkel. Based on influence alone, Rem Koolhaas—the grandson of architect Dirk Roosenburg and son of author and thinker Anton Koolhaas—stands above all others and has, over the course of a career spanning four decades, sought to redefine the role of the architect from a regional autarch to a globally-active shaper of worlds – be they real or imagined. A new film conceived and produced by Tomas Koolhaas, the LA-based son of its eponymous protagonist, attempts to biographically represent the work of OMA by “expos[ing] the human experience of [its] architecture through dynamic film.” No tall order.

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Marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of their iconic Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, UN Studio, along with the Kunsthal and Heerema Group, have organized an exhibition demonstrating “the many and varied ways that the bridge has been embraced by the public and become a symbol of the city of Rotterdam.”

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In the newest video by architects Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost of YouTube’s #donotsettle, the duo visit MVRDV’s "The Stairs" installed outside Centraal Station in Rotterdam. The project commemorates the 75th anniversary of the city’s reconstruction after World War II by devising the staircase now attached to the Groot Handelsgebouw, a landmark and one of Rotterdam’s first post-war buildings. In the video, Pratomo and Provoost discuss the idea of temporariness, experience-driven architecture, context, and symbolism inspired by MVRDV’s intervention, all the while asking other visitors for their own reactions to the spectacle.