2026 is shaping up to be an exciting year for design lovers, with an array of global design exhibitions set to be staged at some of the world's most celebrated institutions. Our exhibition calendar includes retrospectives of design legends, from Verner Panton to Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and in-depth looks at the work of giants such as Isamu Noguchi and Alessandro Mendini.

We also can’t wait to delve deeper into the archives of some of our favourite grandes dames of design, with shows dedicated to Hella Jongerius, Es Devlin and Sabine Marcelis.

Below are the institutional exhibitions we are most looking forward to – mark your diaries, and don’t miss our 2026 design fairs calendar too.

2026 design exhibitions to discover

‘Fungi: Anarchist Designers’ at Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam

This groundbreaking design exhibition curated by anthropologist Anna Tsing and designer Feifei Zhou presents fungi as 'radical designers in a world beyond human control'. On view at Rotterdam's Het Nieuwe Instituut, the display explores how mushrooms and moulds can cause decomposition, death and destruction, but also explores their potential to work together with human and non-human life. The curator commissioned seven new installations for the exhibition, created by designers working closely with scientists, and also includes artworks from artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Annicka Yi. The thought-provoking exhibition aims to challenge our perception of design while answering the question, what can we learn from non-human life?

Until 8 August 2026, Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, 3015 CB Rotterdam

Alessandro Mendini at Estorick Collection, London

The first solo exhibition of Alessandro Mendini’s work in the UK, this show features a curation of over 50 pieces, ranging from furniture and drawings to paintings, rugs and objects. The playful poetry of Mendini's work is explored through the artistic references and inspirations that helped shape his career. Among the connections woven by the exhibition are those with Futurist artist Fortunato Depero, to whom the designer dedicated two works in fabric, and Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract paintings, referenced in Mendini's Kandissi sofa.

16 January – 10 May 2026, Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN

‘Noguchi’s New York’ at The Noguchi Museum

Isamu Noguchi first arrived in New York City in 1922 and, despite his globe-spanning career in art and design, the city remained a base for him throughout his life – and its material, cultural, social and political landscapes a profound influence on his ideas and work. In turn, Noguchi left his own mark on the city – with public art proposals and communal spaces designed for engagement and play (many of which faced opposition from figures such as NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses). Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the inauguration of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, this exhibition examines Noguchi’s enduring efforts to give back to the city that inspired him. It also celebrates the museum itself as one of his most lasting contributions to New York, highlighting the dialogue between art and surroundings that defined Noguchi’s vision and legacy.

4 February – 5 July 2026, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York

‘Art of Noise’ at Cooper Hewitt, New York

This major exhibition examines how design has shaped the way we experience music over the last century. From concert posters and album covers to the design of radios, phonographs, digital players and sound systems, ‘Art of Noise’ brings together over 300 objects from the collections of Cooper Hewitt and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to reveal how designers have influenced our relationship with sound. The exhibition also features dynamic audio environments by Stockholm-based Teenage Engineering and multidisciplinary artist Devon Turnbull, inviting visitors to engage with sound and design in entirely new ways – from custom listening rooms to innovative seating environments – showing how visual and industrial practices both reflect and shape cultural, technological and social shifts in music.

13 February – 19 July 2026, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

‘Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things’ at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

The first retrospective of Hella Jongerius’ work, this exhibition follows the Vitra Design Museum's acquisition of her archives and charts the Dutch designer's creative trajectory across several disciplines, including textiles, ceramics, furniture, lighting, and sculpture. Alongside the archives will be an overview of Jongeriuslab, the designer's studio, and its unique approach to creativity, shaped by a mix of 'layering ideas, drawing connections, emphasising materiality, exposing process, and researching deeply, with a dedication to craft, colour, and cosmic thinking'.

14 March – 6 September 2026, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany

‘Lella and Massimo Vignelli’ at Triennale Milano

A major retrospective dedicated to the work of Lella and Massimo Vignelli, this exhibition is a testament to the designers’ crucial impact on popular culture through product design and visual communications. The Vignellis left post-war Milan and settled in New York to establish their studio in 1965, and their ‘intellectual and human journey’ is narrated through a curated selection of objects, furniture, interiors, drawings, models, sketches, photographs, manuals, trademarks, books, covers, and magazines. The exhibition is designed by Jasper Morrison, and created with the support of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology (USA), which preserves more than 750,000 objects from the studio's history.

25 March – 6 September 2026, Triennale Milano, Viale Alemagna 6, Milan

‘Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space’ at Vitra Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

It’s no exaggeration to say that Danish architect and designer Verner Panton (1926-1998) transformed furniture, interiors, fabrics, lamps and buildings with his bold forms, vibrant colours and visionary ideas. In 2026, he would have celebrated his 100th birthday; to mark the occasion, the Vitra Design Museum’s Schaudepot exhibition – one of the most significant collections of Panton’s designs – is presenting his work chronologically and thematically. The exhibition highlights iconic pieces such as the ‘Panton’ chair and the 1970 ‘Visiona II’ installation; it also reconstructs the designer’s 1970 ‘Fantasy Landscape’, a walk-in environment that transformed the way people experienced space, colour and form. The exhibition places Panton’s work in its historical context, examining his innovations in materials and production, the postwar social shifts that shaped his designs, and the influence of the Space Age.

23 May 2026 – 9 May 2027, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Es Devlin at the Design Museum, London

This is the first major UK survey of Es Devlin’s 30-year career, showcasing her work across sculpture, performance and light installations. Operating at the intersection of art, performance, architecture and technology, Devlin is known for elevating stage design to an art form. Her work treats audiences as ‘temporary societies’ – rather than serving as a backdrop, it shapes how people gather, move and feel within a space, whether that’s through kinetic stage sculptures for artists like Beyoncé, U2 and The Weeknd, or monumental installations for events such as the Olympic ceremonies and Super Bowl halftime show. Developed in close collaboration with Devlin, this retrospective features rare maquettes, sketches, annotated texts and process materials alongside new sculptures and installations created specifically for the exhibition, highlighting her transformative influence on contemporary art and design while revealing the ideas and processes behind her most ambitious work.

18 September 2026 – 11 April 2027, Design Museum, London

‘Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley’ at Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas

In the 15 years since establishing their design studio, twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas have crafted a world filled with magical creatures and larger-than-life biomorphic ideas that also happen to be brilliant design objects. This exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art explores the Austin natives' magical output; discover sculptural objects made in a variety of techniques and materials, including porcelain, bronze, wool, glass beads, fur, and more.

26 September 2026 – 17 January 2027, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, 200 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd

‘Sabine Marcelis – Light and Color’ at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

Sabine Marcelis’ first museum exhibition is dedicated to the Dutch designer’s impeccable colour and light work, exploring the past few years' output alongside newly commissioned light pieces. On view at Zürich's Museum für Gestaltung, the show presents an insight into Marcelis' practice, with samples and material studies offering a look behind the scenes of her work, combined with a carefully conceived spatial experience that honours her expressive designs.

30 October 2026 – 14 March 2027, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Pfingstweidstrasse 96

‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’ at the Design Museum, London

This landmark exhibition highlights contemporary Black designers who are reshaping the British and global design landscape. Ambitious and wide-ranging, it encompasses furniture, architecture, fashion and installation. The featured designers, including the likes of Mac Collins, Samuel Ross, Bianca Saunders and Giles Tettey Nartey, draw on identity, culture and community to create work that reflects the complexities of modern Black experience. The exhibition situates this work within a broader historical context, referencing movements such as the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s and the New Black Aesthetic of the 1980s, while interpreting these legacies for today’s landscape. ‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’ reveals the transformative ways Black designers are shaping design, as well as inviting audiences to rethink entrenched narratives about who defines it.

6 November 2026 – 8 August 2027, Design Museum, London

Fenix, a new international art museum dedicated to migration, has just opened in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Located in a historic 1923 shipping and storage warehouse, a new spiralling reflective double-helix staircase emerges from its heart.

'I knew immediately that I didn’t want to touch the façade or exterior,' explains Ma Yansong, founder and principal partner at MAD Architects, the Chinese architecture firm that led the transformation of the building, 'but I did want to do something visible.'

Yansong wanted to 'open up' what he felt was a heavy-duty building made of reinforced concrete that 'was like a piece of infrastructure.' He also wanted to make it more 'architecturally transparent and uplifting.'

Taking a tour of Fenix's sweeping curves

The focal point of the new project, which was funded by Rotterdam-based philanthropic foundation Droom en Daad, is the 30 m-tall double-helix steel staircase, or ‘Tornado’, as it was almost instantly dubbed by the locals and teams on the ground.

The latter punches through a new glass roof in the now airy and bright central reception atrium and takes visitors on a 550 m journey up to a 24 m-high viewing platform. From here, they are afforded panoramic views across the city and the mighty Maas River. A little lower down, the Tornado also features a striking 12 m-long cantilever in one of its sweeping staircases that allows visitors to 'float directly above the water.'

The double staircase is both sculptural and functional but also part of the storytelling experience explains Yansong, referencing as it does the movement involved with migration and the 'metaphor of the journey' through its ‘choices’ of different staircases. The walkways and platform are lined with planks of Norwegian Kebony wood, bringing to mind the external flooring of a steam liner and scenes of farewells from the top deck.

According to Yansong and the museum team, the sinuous steel structure is also a way of connecting the history of the building, which belonged to Dutch cargo and passenger company the Holland America Line, and carried more than two million emigrants from Europe to the ‘New World’ in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to its multi-cultural present and future.

'We wanted a contrast in terms of material and geometry,' says Yansong, 'but we also wanted the two structures to seamlessly become one, which is why we tried to reduce the columns to a minimum and hide the support.'

The Tornado’s highly polished steel panels are designed to reflect the shifting light during the day, as well as provide 'reflections of people in movement.' Close up, the 297 steel panels, which were made in Groningen in the Netherlands (by the same company behind some of Anish Kapoor’s oversized steel artworks), are joined together in a way that seems effortless but that belies the complexity of the task. 'Each panel is a unique size and shape, so they have to meet perfectly,' explains Yansong.

Fenix is the first cultural project designed by MAD in Europe and the first museum in Europe to be designed by a Chinese architecture firm. It is a fact that carries even more meaning given that the museum looks out from its southern façade on to a district called Katendrecht, which housed the first Chinatown in mainland Europe and was, at one time, home to 87 lively cafes and restaurants frequented by the Cape Verdean, Surinamese, Chinese and other communities that lived and worked there.

The meticulous renovation of the rest of the 172 m-long building, which was partly reconstructed in the early 1950s after extensive bombing and fire damage, was led by Rotterdam architecture firm Bureau Polderman. Their task was, among other things, to remove some of the accretions of the past 60 years and restore a rhythm and uniformity to the facades. The characteristic 1920s rectangular lattice windows on the southern side, with their angled corners have been restored and painted the same olive green they were back then, as have the industrial sliding doors at street level.

The gallery space inside, especially at first floor level, is airy and bright with attractive original board-formed concrete walls, while a large 2,275 sq m flexible space, called Plein (or ‘Square’) on the ground floor, will be open for events, performances and community uses by local residents even when the museum is closed. Entrances to the museum on both sides of the building make it accessible from the riverfront but also permeable and open to residents in the neighbourhood to the south. The aim of the museum is to 'welcome the world' while being very much rooted in the city.

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‘As you may see, Rotterdam is not Rome. It is not Paris, and definitely not Amsterdam. We are different,’ says Robert Simons, vice mayor of Rotterdam’s port and economy. ‘We do have a rich history which allowed for our architectural journey to take a different turn. After the Second World War, our city centre was destroyed. From this, Rotterdam decided to make a bold decision, to rebuild and restore. This allowed us to focus on innovation and our connection to the river mass.’

Enter the new Rotterdam visitor centre: Portlantis

His notes mark the opening of Portlantis, a new educational centre built on the cusp of the port in Rotterdam, where the land meets the sea. Its main purpose is to offer an interactive journey which takes visitors through the story of the city’s rich maritime history, while projecting a glimpse into the future.

The building was designed by architecture studio MVRDV, with interior design by Kossmanndejon, who worked closely with each other to make sure the structure was built with sustainable architecture in mind, while informed by functionality requirements and the surrounding environment. The result is a demountable building with reusable façade panels. It is fully energy-neutral, drawing from its own wind turbine and 266 solar panels.

Located around 45 minutes from the city centre, Portlantis is a modern marvel overlooking the sea. Comprising five cubic volumes, its geometric façade is intriguing and playful, taking on the shape of a Rubik's cube in play. Each level holds distinct character and educational purposes to ignite a spark within the young children who visit, perhaps inspiring them to pursue a future career in Rotterdam’s maritime industry.

Winy Maas, the architect leading the project for MVRDV, says of the design concept: ‘The port is the opposite of the cuteness of the Netherlands. When designing this project we had to think, “How on earth do we compete with this? The cuteness of the windmills or the considered eyesore of gigantic stacks of cargo containers?” Here we wanted to be inspired by [the windmills]. Which is why we created the building as a “cute stack”.’

Maas continues, 'It all started with materials from the port. The façade is constructed with sandwich panels, which are most robust against the wind, salt and dust. We made them shiny because they [happen to] help monitor the levels of dust and wind – signalling when the façade needs to be cleaned and maintained. [For us] it is a poetic interpretation of the harshness of the surrounding environment and a beacon in the landscape.’

Matte black, cylindrical revolving doors guide visitors through a series of swirling lights and deep hums, before they enter the core of the building. Here, the history of the port is unveiled. A large interactive screen highlights the area's development from the Second World War to the present day. Suspended above and taking up the full 22m atrium height are yellow models of parts of a large boat, its propeller and anchor chain, for example, moving and creating different compositions during the day.

The second floor is about the impact and influences of the port on the region's economy, employment, and environment; while the third floor looks to the future. ‘We are in a world of climate change,’ says Herman Kossman, the exhibition designer for Portlantis. ‘We need to think about energy transition and geopolitical changes. This is something the port wants to present, to showcase answers on how to deal with these issues in the future.’

The fourth and fifth floors host a restaurant and an accessible rooftop offering a panoramic view where you can put everything that the exhibition has relayed into context.

The centre is predicted to host 150,000 visitors per year. It is designed to allow visitors to find their own way through the building in order to connect with the port’s maritime spirit.

‘Portlantis’ interior and exterior are designed to be connected,’ explains Kossman. 'Its content and form are interconnected. In our professional world [many projects] start with a building. The architects design it, and then exhibition designers come in and set up their displays. This isn’t just a building with a story inside. The building is also part of the story.’

Portlantis is located at Pr. Máximaweg 301, 3199 KG Maasvlakte Rotterdam, Netherlands portofrotterdam.maglr.com

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'Rotterdam is a city of no-nonsense. In this city, we often say, “don’t talk, but act”, and this mentality perfectly reflects the innovative spirit of today’s designers,' says Liv Vaisberg who, with Sarah Schulten, co-founded the Rotterdam Design Biennale, now in its inaugural year. The not-for-profit grassroots event sees hundreds of makers and designers exhibit their work in a series of disused buildings around the city, including Baanhof, a former electrical station and W70, a multi-storey office that served as the Shell HQ, located just a stone’s throw from the OMA offices in the business district.

The indefatigable Vaisberg, founder of Office for Art and Design and also behind Collectible Art Fair in Brussels, and art/design consultant Schulten have strong curatorial smarts and a drive to up the ante, and the creative capital of Rotterdam – an underdog city compared to the tourist magnet of Amsterdam, but one whose ongoing urban rethink earned it a Wallpaper* Design Award earlier in 2025.

'We issued an open call for designers and received hundreds of applicants ranging from emerging to established designers,' says Vaisberg of the inaugural Rotterdam Design Biennale, noting the many alumni of Design Academy Eindhoven who have set up studios in the city. The range of work, from around 200 studios, spans furniture, sculpture and hand-crafted work, including 3D-printed plaster vases by Jonas Woolf, serene resin lighting sculptures by Laurids Gallee and Studio Sabine Marcelis, and delightfully frivolous decorative objects by Barry Llewellyn.

Vaisberg explains the leaning was towards ‘sculptural elements’ rather than product design, and to experimental work that challenges the role of design and its interplay with diversity, social justice and ecology under the umbrella theme 'What’s Real Is Unfamiliar'. Indeed, many of the makers work with waste, including rugged furniture made of steel scraps by Studio Larssen, and Adam Maryniak’s chair collection. This set designer utilises offcuts such as wood architrave and plywood in forms that span brutalist to throne-like.

The spacious and often surreal venues make way for striking installations under thematic umbrellas. At W70, designers make use of former phone booths and conference rooms; sculptor Pepe Valenti, for example, has hung his space with copper, chrome and brass pieces, nicely reflecting the moody Rotterdam light. Meanwhile, Jonas Woolf explores the traditions and patterns of Delft ceramics in his beautiful 3D plaster-printed vessels. 'I wanted to explore the mythical and fragile side of digital design beyond what we see as sterile and perfect production,' says Woolf of his hazy blue and white ornaments. At the venue Huidenclub, a co-working and studio space, Vaisberg has curated the show ‘Interstices’ with storytelling work by international designers with mixed heritage who blend cultural traditions. One standout is Giles Tettey Nartey, who creates stools and headrests that draw from the vernacular of portable wooden headrests commonly used in West Africa (and was part of Wallpaper’s ‘Class of ’24’ exhibition at Milan Design Week 2024). 'They are used for protecting the hair when lying down and also for rest,' says Tettey Nartey, who reimagined those forms in smoky grey resin.

Indeed, polymer resin (designers are experimenting with different bio mixes) commonly used in Rotterdam’s ship-building industry, is a specialism in the city, with award-winning Sabine Marcelis known for her ‘Candy Cubes’ (she has also worked with Celine, Bulgari and Ikea) and Laurids Gallee leading the guard. Austrian Gallee has installed his linear lighting sculptures in gradated shades of amber in a former immigration office. 'I learnt from master craftsmen and it is a fascinating luminous material to work with, sanding and grinding, that takes weeks of work. I landed in Rotterdam as there is a strong maker spirit and a will to push boundaries, and that is what grabbed me,' says Gallee, also noting the strength of community, available space and low rents.

The ten-day Rotterdam Design Biennale is also staging a series of talks and symposiums at the Nieuwe Instituut. 'One of the great things about the institute, and really the whole Dutch context that has produced such an institute, is that we're able to work across multiple areas. Not just design, architecture and digital culture, but also in terms of our functions. So, we have a museum part, which includes the archive and the collection, and we do exhibitions and public programmes,' says Aric Chen, general and artistic director of the Nieuwe Instituut. On now is ‘Garden Futures’, exploring how the garden can be a ‘lab’ for climate adaptation and biodiversity.

'We also have a more behind-the-scenes policy role working on national policy initiatives around everything from creative industries to spatial planning to heritage policy. Right now, we're doing projects in Dakar, Senegal, Indonesia and New York. The ability to totally rethink systems is a very, real strength of the Dutch: there's an incredible ability to just take nothing for granted,' adds Chen.

'What's great about this new Rotterdam Biennale is that it helps bring out of the woodwork all the interesting work that's often behind closed doors because it's happening in the studios or by the old port. Rotterdam has always been known for its architecture, design, and its innovative way of thinking,' says Chen. OMA (its De Rotterdam three-tower complex is a triumph on the skyline) and MVRDV (behind the shiny vessel-shaped Depot Boijmans van Beuningen and the new Portlantis, a visitor and exhibition centre in the port set to open in March 2025) are best known of a clutch of practices are that helped rethink and reimagine Rotterdam after it was decimated in WW2, creating a culture of progressive design. 'I don't know of another city that takes this ethos of experimentation and reimagining and embraces it as part of its identity,' says Chen.

Rotterdam Design Biennale runs until 2 March 2025 at various locations across Rotterdam, designbiennalerotterdam.com

Rotterdam, as is often commented in the built environment circles, is a deeply ‘architectural’ city. Today part of the most populous metropolitan area in the Netherlands and Europe’s largest seaport, Rotterdam saw its city centre nearly entirely razed to the ground in 1940 during Second World War bombing. It was rebuilt post-war at a 20th-century pace around its few surviving downtown buildings, such as modernist architecture gems Sonneveld House and Chabot Museum. This gave birth to an influential generation of architects along the way, who dominated the world scene at the end of the century and the first quarter of the next – such as Rem Koolhaas’ OMA/AMO, MVRDV, and Neutelings Riedijk.

Rotterdam: now and in the future

Today, Rotterdam is changing again, responding to an entirely different challenge – a mix of the worldwide climate emergency that is upon us all, and the city’s own site-specific challenges, such as its intense densification in the past 15 years (its centre is one of the densest in the country); its location on the mouth of the River Rhine; and the gradual (over several decades) move of its enormous port and all the logistics and places that come with it to a site further outside its main urban core towards the sea.

As a result, Rotterdam is respectively facing unpredictable weather patterns; addressing its increasing population’s needs for housing and well-being; and needs to restore the ecosystem in its old port (an area currently spanning 12,600 hectares and 40km in length) and repurpose the building stock left behind.

A range of new initiatives and live projects prove that this extremely architecturally active city is not only not resting on its laurels, but has sprung straight into action in the face of these difficulties. As part of the country’s recently announced ‘New Dutch’ movement, a platform that focuses on its 21st-century innovation, Rotterdam has generated a wealth of schemes that aim to safeguard the city’s longevity and health – both in terms of its urban fabric and inhabitants.

The city authorities have initiated a series of key projects that aim to bring nature back into the fold, creating new, important green lungs in several neighbourhoods, including Rotterdam’s own ‘high line’, Hofbogenpark, a bio-inclusive raised park set on the site of an old rail line. Designed by landscape architects De Urbanisten and with its first test area now complete, the project is due to open to the public in 2027.

Meanwhile, beyond creating new housing and more mixed-use buildings around the old harbour of Rijnhaven, the water is now being rewilded by elevating the seabed so that, in combination with the tidal movement, marine species can thrive (it was previously dug in to allow for large ships to moor, which consequently meant the floor was too deep and dark for them to survive). Gardens on its banks and floating parks accessed via jetties are also created to restore local wildlife and planting.

A bit further away from the city centre, De Urbanisten has also just delivered Keilehaven Tidal Park, west of the centre. It’s part of a larger public project to turn the entire Rotterdam shoreline into a large-scale tidal park that will bring nature back to the entire city, combining the benefits of an urban park and its location on a natural estuary system. Replanting with native species is matched by using recycled materials from local building sites for quay cobblestones and the filling of gabions.

More projects aim at tapping into the power of the elements to bring balance to our environment – built and natural. Local biotech design studio Nova Innova has recently launched Pond, a device using microbial fuel cell technology to highlight water quality levels in lakes and rivers. It is also currently studying ways to harness the energy from photosynthesis to sustainably illuminate parks.

The same approach was also applied to the introduction of watersquares across the city, such as Benthemplein (opened in 2013), a public plaza acting as a ‘sponge’ and designed to absorb rainwater during periods of increased rainfall. This is then stored for plant irrigation during periods of drought, balancing out potential extreme weather conditions in the future. Benthemplein is on ground level but other watersquares are built below ground, acting almost as mini reservoirs.

These are all long-term plans, many of whose seeds were planted more than a decade ago, and whose fruit won’t be fully experienced for a few more years; but they are all projects that show how Rotterdam has been slowly and steadily moving towards future-proofing its built environment. In more immediate plans, two big museum openings in 2025 – Fenix by MAD and Nederlands Fotomuseum by Renner Hainke Wirth Zirn Architekten and WDJArchitecten – both set in reinvented warehouses within the old port, flag how reuse can play a key role too, promising an exciting year, and decade, ahead for the Dutch city.

en.rotterdam.info

Read about more architecture winners from the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025.

The Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 winners are also featured in full in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

It feels like the past year was one of reassessment. In fact, the prefix ‘re’ seems to be popping up in project descriptions and initiatives the world over, with architects rethinking, restructuring, refitting and reimagining, aiming to restore, rebalance and renew the built environment and the way we live. Perhaps this is nothing new and indeed the entire purpose of architecture – to transform lives. Or perhaps this is felt more acutely now than ever, as big, ongoing debates on critical global topics (sustainability, equality, inclusion) and dramatic recent world events (pandemic, war and political turbulence) have sparked an urge in us all to hit refresh.

An overarching need for repair and reinvention is sparking simultaneously a speeding up and a slowing down of action on various fronts, as signalled in some key new projects that are primed to set the mood for 2025 – as part of an era of powerful, yet gentle statements.

Wallpaper’s Ellie Stathaki delves into what defined the 2025 Wallpaper* Architecture Awards

Wellbeing and restorative strategies are increasingly coming to the forefront of our efforts to nurture people, places, and souls. In this context, connecting with nature is steadily rising to the top of the priority list for many. For some, this might take the form of experiencing open spaces and the wild outdoors or seeking solitude and retreat, where one can focus on views, nature and oneself. Protecting and preserving said nature is an arm of this practice, boldly delivered through an entirely new arboretum in Belgium’s Marche-en-Famenne.

This trend can also bring out the desire to escape; here holiday homes, from the archetypal, simple cabin to more luxurious, contemporary guest houses, have always had this allure, often used as shorthand for the desire to leave the world’s problems behind and go into cocoon mode to refocus and hopefully, reach inspired solutions. Few projects embody this sentiment better than Halifax architect Brian MacKay-Lyons’ El Aleph, a building that is ‘silent, but with more to say’ on the ragged Canadian coast.

Of course, it would be naive to suggest that we should all forego the buzz of urban living and become solitary nature explorers. Cities and their myriad offerings present a different kind of ecosystem but one that’s equally important to develop and grow, blending the urban condition’s multiple layers and facets, while prioritising residents’ (human and otherwise) well-being.

Pausing to breathe and sync with the elements can happen here too, and doing so is not a mere ‘bonus’ any longer – but a necessity. The case of Rotterdam, The Netherlands’ second largest metropolitan area (but at a couple of million, still relatively small, compared to the world’s megalopolises) brings an interesting and refreshing approach to the global stage. How can this industrial, modern, growing city incorporate sustainable attitudes and intentions? The answer seems to be through several initiatives, all happening simultaneously, taking action at different scales while playing the long game.

This rethinking of our built environment also translates to the smaller scale and existing buildings. Our rich legacy of 20th-century treasures, many of which are now steadily becoming in urgent need of a refresh, is an interesting topic to explore in this light. What does the legacy of modernism mean for the 21st century, and where does it fit into our current needs and wider zeitgeist? We certainly do not need to reject the past altogether – but rather, make it work in a way that responds to the needs of today.

Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall, a listed, landmark project by Finnish modernist Alvar Aalto, responds to this with a dramatic restoration – yet a subtle one, which you may not even notice if you are simply walking past it. Opening in January 2025, the building has been delicately transformed in its accessibility and energy efficiency, while painstakingly and faithfully updating the monument’s fabric where needed.

Meanwhile, tackling the other end of the spectrum of the life of a building, Limbo Accra has launched its first physical museum - Limbo Museum - in the Ghanaian capital tasked with examining the African continent’s unfinished buildings, what they mean, and the role of these ‘ruins’ in our cities.

Architecture is a notoriously slow-moving beast, but if these projects are any indication, there is plenty to be hopeful about for 2025. And there’s plenty to be looking out for too, as after a pandemic lull, a slew of key new cultural openings are now on the horizon for the new year – including (but not limited to) the Yale Centre of British Arts’ reopening post-restoration in New Haven; the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture by Asif Khan in Almaty, Kazakhstan; the Frick Collection’s reimagining by Selldorf Architects in New York; the 2025 Expo Osaka; ; and Jean Nouvel’s new Fondation Cartier in Paris.

At the same time, the human dynamic seems to be changing too, thanks to digital technology. As architect and academic Lesley Lokko puts it in her essay about taking stock and looking forward to the next year, ‘newer, younger, “other” voices are bursting onto the scene and there is a generosity in the cultural zeitgeist that I find really inspiring.’ To move forward, this injection of fresh thinking is just what we need.

Best Modernist Revival

Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland

Modernist architecture master Alvar Aalto's design for Finlandia Hall, a large concert and congress venue in Helsinki’s Töölö Bay, was built in 1971. It has since become a landmark, not only for its architect’s oeuvre but also for the city and Finland’s wider cultural scene. By 2019, nearly fifty years after its creation, Finlandia Hall was due a refresh. Now a listed monument and beloved city icon, Finlandia Hall has been refreshed by Arkkitehdit NRT, deeply yet delicately restoring its fabric and functions set to bring it to the 21st century.

Best Retreat

El Aleph Guest House by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, Canada

‘Elemental’ seems to be an understatement for El Aleph and its site, which feels mesmerizingly wild and open to the weather. The project was a perfect fit for MacKay-Lyons, whose studio is known for crafting quiet buildings with a strong presence and a story to tell. ‘When you’re there, it feels like you’re alone in the world,’ says the architect. ‘You can see the other structures but it’s a long journey from anywhere, it’s remote and dangerous, as well as spiritual, so it’s the perfect place to feel the solitude and be in tune with nature.’

Best Urban Rethink

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Rotterdam has been changing, responding to the worldwide climate emergency, its intense densification in the past 15 years, its location on the mouth of the River Rhine, and the gradual move of its enormous port to a site further outside its main urban core towards the sea. Now, a range of new initiatives and live projects prove that this extremely architecturally active city has sprung straight into action in the face of these difficulties. As part of the country’s recently announced ‘New Dutch’ movement, a platform that focuses on its 21st-century innovation, Rotterdam has generated a wealth of schemes that aim to safeguard the city’s longevity and health - both in terms of its urban fabric and inhabitants.

Best Landscape

Marche Arboretum, Belgium

A new plant ‘museum’ has opened in Marche-en-Famenne, in the region of Wallonia. The site, Marche Arboretum, which has been many years in the making, includes a new visitor centre by local studio AW architectes. Marche-en-Famenne is the second scheme of its kind initiated by businessman and dendrologist Philippe de Spoelberch, who started informally planting trees in his family estate in Wespelaar, Flanders in 1966. An extension to an initial 10ha in 1986 allowed him to further his collection. The entire 20-ha extension was donated in 2003 to a dedicated foundation, the Stichting Arboretum Wespelaar - which is now behind Marche Arboretum.

Best Architectural Legacy

Limbo Museum, Ghana

Limbo Accra’s transformative approach to architecture redefines what it means to engage with the built environment - and their latest project, Limbo Museum, has just opened in collaboration with curator Diallo Simon-Ponte and architect Lennart Wolff,. By repairing and reimagining unfinished spaces, the studio creates dynamic platforms for dialogue, creativity and community, resulting in a new legacy for overlooked structures. Ultimately, Limbo Accra’s work reminds us that within every building skeleton lies the potential for new beginnings. 

All of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 winners will be celebrated online over the coming month and are featured in full in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The new Nederlands Fotomuseum, set in Rotterdam's wider Rijnhaven dock area, has been rapidly taking shape. The structure, a beloved existing building's redesign and extension by Renner Hainke Wirth Zirn Archtitekten, Hamburg and WDJARCHITECTEN, Rotterdam, is well underway; with its building works now completed and the development focus turning to its interiors. The estimated opening date is in 2025.

Nederlands Fotomuseum: work in progress

The Santos warehouse, the period structure on site which the museum project is breathing a new life into, first opened in 1903. Designed by architects JP Stok Wzn and JJ Kanters, it served as storage for the Brazilian coffee trade.

The new photography museum's home is set to boast eight floors for exhibitions, including space for its own collection, alongside studios, a specialist photography bookshop, education areas, and a rooftop restaurant.

The leisure facilities at the very top promise to offer striking vistas of Rotterdam's skyline, one of the Netherlands' finest architectural ones, including landmark buildings such as UNStudio's Erasmus Bridge and OMA's De Rotterdam.

Come 2025, the institution will officially move from its current location on the Wilhelminapier (where it's been since 2007), to the neighbourhood of Katendrecht, across the water. The new building, funded with the help of the Droom en Daad foundation, was acquired in 2023.

The museum's director Birgit Donker has said: 'We are excited about the completion of the renovation phase and look forward to the opening of our new location in Katendrecht next year. This new chapter allows us to continue our mission to celebrate, explore and promote photography as a powerful medium. '

nederlandsfotomuseum.nl

Kunlé Adeyemi’s fascination with water cities goes back years. The Amsterdam-based Nigerian architect conceived his now-famous Makoko Floating School in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2011, and similar ideas have been in development throughout his career as an architect. Now, his research and concepts around floating structures and living on water are coming to Rotterdam, as Het Nieuwe Instituut has just launched its annual installation under the leadership of its creative and artistic director Arik Chen – welcome to ‘Water Cities Rotterdam. By Kunlé Adeyemi’.

Water cities and alternative urban futures

Adeyemi's ideas about alternative urban futures, city growth and different ways of living can be found as early as an essay he published in 2007 in the journal Log, entitled 'Urban Crawl'. Makoko Floating School followed, its construction completed in 2012. More floating models after that included one at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, one in Bruges, and one in Chengdu, both in 2018. Adeyemi’s Floating Music Hub in Cape Verde won Best Music Venue at the 2021 Wallpaper* Design Awards, and opened to the public the same year. 

All the projects used the architect's Makoko Floating System (MFS), a prefabricated, modular, A-frame, sustainable timber structure that offers alternatives for living on water – something, Adeyemi points out, many cultures already do, in many parts of the world. 

'Every time I do an incarnation of it, the thinking evolves,' Adeyemi says. 'I am always developing it and trying to understand its challenges and functions, developing new solutions and technologies on how to live and build on water. This is just one of many building typologies that are part of the ecosystem of what we call water cities – in Africa, but also as a wider concept around the world.'

‘Water Cities Rotterdam. By Kunlé Adeyemi’

For 'Water Cities Rotterdam. By Kunlé Adeyemi', Chen invited the architect to take charge of the Het Nieuwe Instituut's annual summer installation. They discussed it and decided to offer the public a chance to experience his proposals and floating models – building one on the pond outside the institute, which the public can board and visit. 

The structure used is in fact the 2016 Venice one, adding an element of sustainable architecture and circularity to the project. 'I realised that I had the original Venice installation in storage, so we upcycled that for this installation. We tweaked it a little, as it was too tall, but it's the same one,' Adeyemi says. 

The evolution here is that the architect worked with specialists on marine life, and added underwater cameras to observe how the wildlife behaves around the structure. 'We wanted to use it to observe underwater life through the project, to see the impact. We haven't done this intentionally before, although we have examined things casually in the past. Now we are installing cameras and observing and reversing the gaze, to see what it looks like and see what the underwater life sees. There will also be a projection, where visitors can adopt the same view,' the architect explains. 

Adeyemi hopes that through this creative display, awareness will be raised and people will feel more open to exploring living alongside water. 'I think it’s not only a valid path to take [to expand cities on the water] but it is also an inevitable [one],' he stresses. 'It will suddenly be the only way, because of sea level rises and the increase in water flooding all around the world. It’s alarming and cities and communities have to adapt. You either retreat from water, and try to fight it, [or] another way is to learn to live with it. Many communities have done it around the world in the past already –especially in Asia and Africa.'

African Water Cities, a book expanding on these themes, will be released in June 2023, while the display at Het Nieuwe Instituut will include collaborations with artist Thijs de Zeeuw and graphic artists Opperclaes. 

nieuweinstituut.nl 

Located within a system of dikes and small islands, this Rotterdam house appears serene and idyllic; yet it was designed to withstand harsh weather conditions and works cleverly and hard towards a sustainable architecture result. The brainchild of local architecture practice Studio AAAN, Terphouse, as the project was titled, balances contemporary architecture and environmental friendliness, set upon a low mound engulfed in low greenery and flowers. 

A modern Rotterdam house: Terphouse

Terphouse is situated in the suburbs of the city of Rotterdam, within an environment that brings together nature and constructed context – both in terms of buildings and humanmade landscape. ‘The house is dug in the artificial mound on the island, situating the living spaces on the first level and the bedrooms and secondary rooms underground. This means that from the living spaces the open landscape is perceived over the dikes. By folding the landscape around the house, a connection with the garden is made possible and the house is perceived as a modest solid in the landscape,' the architects write. 

While its setting heavily informed its overall design, the architects took care to ensure Terphouse looks suitably modern too, featuring low, clean volumes made of brick walls, large expanses of glazing and a distinctive, flat timber roof. A range of patios, both external and internal, dot the arrangement, offering open spaces and connections to the outdoors at every turn. 

The wooden roof and its low slung, linear nature was definitive in the design's overall impression. The architecture team, headed by studio founders Hilbrand Wanders, Luuk Stoltenborg and Rik de Ruiter, explain: 'The pronounced wooden beam structure is continuous from the interior to the exterior and forms a canopy on the south façade. As a result, the boundary between the living room, veranda, outdoor rooms and the patio becomes indistinct and the landscape flows into the house.'

aaan.nl 

The Rotterdam Rooftop Walk, a 600m-long orange carpet set 30m up, has opened to visitors. The temporary installation, designed by Rotterdam Rooftop Days and architecture studio MVRDV, encompasses a bridge across one of Rotterdam’s key streets, the Coolsingel.

Offering the opportunity for a new take on the city, the Rooftop Walk encourages visitors to consider issues such as the housing crisis, the possibilities of renewable energy, and the problems posed by climate change. The heightened perspective allows the 18.5 sq m of flat roofs in Rotterdam to be observed, raising possibilities as to their potential.

‘In 2006, for the celebration of 75 years of Rotterdam’s reconstruction, we designed the Stairs to Kriterion, which attracted almost 370,000 visitors,’ says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas. ‘That’s when the idea arose that it would be good to make a sequel to the project. During the Eurovision Song Contest [in 2021], the idea was to make a high stage to honour the winner, but that was cancelled due to the pandemic. I am glad that Rotterdam Rooftop Days has managed to achieve this, and I want to argue for a further sequel: we should not only occupy our roofs and make them greener but also connect them so that we can offer Rotterdammers a new rooftop park. For this, the orange carpet and the bridging of the Coolsingel are a nice initial test case.’

The new space above the city has attracted designers, architects and artists, who are showcasing how roofs can be used for water storage, energy and food production, and greenery. They have created everything from a virtual village to a green design for De Bijenkorf department store’s roof in a demonstration of the potential utilisation of the space. The creatives have set up a hub part way along the elevated route, which navigates the World Trade Center building as well as that of De Bijenkorf.

INFORMATION

Rotterdam Rooftop Walk is open from 26 May to 24 June from 10am to 8pm (entrance €3.50 for adults, children free). Tickets can be booked via rotterdamsedakendagen.nl or rooftopwalk.nl

On average, most international museums only show six to seven per cent of their collections to the public at any one time. The rest is often off-site and hidden from view, tucked away in closed depots. The new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, designed by architecture firm MVRDV, is bucking this trend, making 99 per cent of its building accessible to the public and the entire collection of the neighbouring Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen – some 151,000 artefacts – available for viewing, even as they are stored.

Technological innovation was key to this bold move, says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas. ‘We put technology on the same level as sociology, ecology and economics,’ he says. ‘Innovations and achievements in all these aspects are equally important.’ Indeed, the Depot’s ovoid, monolithic appearance belies the most sophisticated engineering. The 39.5m-high, bowl-shaped structure is 40m in diameter at the bottom and 60m at the top, and its overhanging part has no direct supports. Additionally, the openings, including the visitors’ entrance, and the entrance and exit for the exhibitions, create weak points on the ground floor. The task, therefore, was to come up with a design in which the lowest (and narrowest) part of the building could withstand the high load from above. 

The solution lay in the foundations: the first two floors were made from concrete poured in situ, functioning as a structurally solid plinth upon which the building’s remaining four storeys could be constructed. These upper floors are made from prefabricated concrete elements. Below ground, the architects were keen to keep the foundation work strong but also as discreet as possible, to avoid obstructing the natural flow of underground water. ‘The foundation piles of the Depot are kept limited and narrow. We trialled this with our design for the Oslo headquarters of the Norwegian bank DNB, where we guaranteed that water could flow through subterraneously using the same principle,’ says Maas. ‘It is important for the environment that no blockage is created by underground parking garages, metro lines and so on.’ 

Covered by 1,664 mirrored glass panels, the 6,609 sq m façade appears to multiply the green scenery of the surrounding Museumpark. A number of different types of glass were used, including standard reflective glass; reflective glass with a film coating, which is used opposite the Erasmus medical centre to safeguard the patients’ privacy; transparent glass for work spaces that need more daylight; and a type of gradient glass that goes from mirror to fully transparent for the entrances and the roof, so that visitors can enjoy the long views from inside, too. The curvature of the glass panels was another challenge. ‘Most of the panels had to go in the oven two or three times to gain the perfect shape. It was a labour-intensive process,’ says Maas. 

The experimentation did not end there. On the roof are 75 birch trees, each several metres high, in an architectural garden. ‘We started growing them in the south of the Netherlands. By keeping the water level just beneath the surface, we trained them to grow their roots horizontally. When we moved them from the nursery, we knotted the roots together, then spread them out on the rooftop, as the overlapping of the roots creates a strong structure,’ says Maas. ‘Growing them was a simple but lengthy process; it took five years.’ The bowl shape means that the building has a limited footprint on the ground floor, while the roof is roomier, also offering wider views over the Museumpark and the city beyond.

To ensure energy efficiency, MVRDV installed underground thermal storage for climate control, solar panels, LED lighting and high-performance insulation. Rainwater is stored for use in irrigation and the toilet facilities, while the remaining water run-off is directed into a neighbouring pond (belonging to Het Nieuw Instituut), which will be converted into a water basin for the surroundings. 

Maas also invited other creatives to contribute to the project. The ground floor comprises two half-moon shaped spaces; one of them contains the entrance hall and the other a loading dock. They are separated by glass. Artist John Körmeling took advantage of the high ceiling here to create a mezzanine, so visitors can watch art handlers at work on the other side of the transparent wall. Amsterdam-based design firm Concrete created a mobile table system for the rooftop restaurant, which means it can be transformed into a gallery or performance space at any time. Artist and photographer Marieke van Diemen designed the atrium’s 13 floating glass display cases: when an artwork is removed from storage, it will immediately be put into a case for protection, but will still be on view. ‘We developed a system where you can see the exhibits at all angles; you can even walk on top of them, or see them below from the glass bridges,’ says Maas.   

There will be storage depots on floors one to five, the education centre will be on the second, galleries on the third and fourth, and the Stichting De Verre Bergen suite (named after Rotterdam’s social investment fund, which covered the building cost of the Depot alongside the City Council) on the fifth. The atrium occupies the central space on all floors and its crisscrossing staircases lead visitors through various public areas, all the way up to the rooftop. Each atrium staircase will have a landing exactly in the centre of the building, allowing visitors a panoramic view from the heart of the Depot. 

An architectural marvel and a landmark for the city of Rotterdam, the Depot marks a new wave of urban development in Europe's largest seaport. The next few years will see the unveiling of MVRDV’s Harbour Experience Centre, the Feyenoord Stadium by OMA, and the Fenix Museum of Migration by MAD Architects, to name a few. As one of the draughtsmen of the city’s bold architecture statements, Maas calls it ‘a kind of laboratory’. ‘Innovations are allowed in Rotterdam,’ he says. ‘The process has actually been going on for 50 years and we have made a very beautiful collection of urban interventions; here you see the experiments of our time.’

INFORMATION

 mvrdv.nl; boijmans.nl 

Rotterdam and OMA have long been intertwined. The Dutch port city has been home to the celebrated architecture practice for over four decades now, and it is also co-founder Rem Koolhaas’ birthplace. Still, the architect didn’t spend a lot of time there until the 1980s. Instead, he followed a more international trajectory in his early years. His childhood was mostly divided between Amsterdam and Jakarta, and after graduating from the Architectural Association in London, he moved to New York to attend Cornell. His book, Delirious New York, published in 1978 to much acclaim, was a kind of love letter to the great American city, exploring its development as well as notions of urbanity and congestion that came to define his career.

OMA was established in 1975 between New York and London (by Koolhaas together with Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp) and by the time of the book’s publication, the architect was heading back to Europe. ‘I was in a strange position, as the book made me relatively well known, but I had never built anything,’ he admits. He decided to return to the Netherlands to pursue work; and if New York played a landmark role in making Koolhaas architecture’s favourite theorist, Rotterdam allowed him to build, to turn theory into practice.

Landing in Amsterdam in 1979, a meeting with a Rotterdam city councillor soon resulted in a ‘dream’ assignment – and one of the first big commission wins for OMA. ‘He was sitting in front of a map of Rotterdam and asked, “So, where do you want to build?” It was very generous. I saw a site on the river and the interesting thing about it was that it was very constrained on one side by water, on the other by a bridge, on a third side by a road and on the fourth by a building,’ says Koolhaas. He picked the site and started designing. The scheme was named Boompjes (‘little trees’ in Dutch) and mixed housing and workspace along the Maasboulevard. It marked the start of a long relationship between the port city and the architecture firm.

Rotterdam, devastated by bombing from both sides during the Second World War, presented a challenge and an opportunity for architects and planners in the second half of the 20th century – large parts of it had to be entirely rebuilt. This was also the reason Koolhaas chose it as his Dutch base in 1980, shortly after the Boompjes commission (two more schemes, the IJ-plein housing and a commissioned study for the possible renovation of the Koepel Panopticon Prison were also in the works in different parts of the country). ‘It made the city very fertile ground for architecture. I had more affinity and interest in Rotterdam. I started an office there almost on a hunch,’ he says. So, in the 1980s and early 1990s, the OMA headquarters was next door to the Boompjes’ plot and the water (a London office had opened in 1975, and Koolhaas and colleagues travelled back and forth as needed). 

Due to its geographical constraints, the Boompjes site could only be experienced in two ways: either passing by the road running parallel to the plot on ground level, or approaching it from across the River Maas via a bridge. These ‘unusually controlled’ views stimulated Koolhaas’ imagination and informed the design. This, combined with the fact that the city authorities allowed him great flexibility, meant the site was ripe for experimentation. ‘We made the design so that it was like an accordion. It could be spread wide or if you approached it from a single angle, you only saw a very narrow side,’ he says. 

The formal response reflects Koolhaas’ architectural preoccupations at the time. The design incorporates a series of five tall, lean highrises set against a horizontal slab placed at the top. Some vertical elements are perpendicular to the slab, others sit at an angle, while one is just slightly apart. The formation became a kind of urban screen, filtering light and framing views from the river to the city and the other way round. ‘Of course, I had written a book about New York, but I was actually much more interested in another typology, the slab,’ the architect points out. ‘Towers are the expression of capitalism and slabs are the main expression of socialism. In the 1980s, it was very interesting to try and create a hybrid shape. Boompjes is a hybrid.’  

The main artwork for the design, produced in 1982, is a silk-screen rendering created by Koolhaas with Italian architect Stefano de Martino, and can still be found in the practice’s archives. It is a triptych – a colourful, geometric composition that brings to mind abstract or constructivist art, and the work of Piet Mondrian or László Moholy-Nagy. A print run of a couple of hundred editions was produced and now many of these sit in museum collections – at MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, CCA and The New Institute, for example. ‘We wanted to explain everything you need to say about this project in a single representation,’ says Koolhaas. The buildings’ colours nod to the passing ships’ bright hues; as port activity was ever-present in the office views, it provided constant inspiration. 

Beyond formal considerations, Koolhaas’ vision for the long and narrow site explored new models for housing development and the future of living. ‘In the 1980s, housing in the Netherlands meant social housing,’ he says. ‘I had just come from America and I was interested in less defined spaces, open spaces. So the building had an industrial quality.’ The design, including a range of private apartments from studios to larger duplexes and loft-style spaces, with its river views, ‘was about flexibility, openness, an uncluttered space’. It also contained a gym and a library on site – a particularly forward-thinking move at a time when amenities in larger-scale residential schemes were anything but the norm. 

Boompjes was sadly never built (‘We presented it to the city a number of times; in the end they sold the site to a developer, but nothing came out of it,’ Koolhaas concludes) but its ideas were pioneering, and live on. In the late 1990s, OMA was commissioned to work on another site by the river in Rotterdam, which faced a similar situation – again, approached by a bridge and its perception controlled by limited viewpoints. That project, just across the water from the Boompjes site, eventually became De Rotterdam, a mixed-use, ‘vertical city’ completed in 2013 beside the city’s Wilhelmina Pier. 

Now, Boompjes is about to get one more incarnation. In 2019, American Express approached OMA for an artistic collaboration with Rem Koolhaas on a new design for Amex’s exclusive Centurion Card. The practice had been working with the card’s signature Roman references, when the client came across the Boompjes project. It became a starting point for the new design, with Rem and his team adapting the triptych visual to the card’s specifications. The result launches from this month. Blending graphic design with thought-provoking architecture that was truly ahead of its time, the product is the smallest item ever designed by Koolhaas. ‘I see graphic design as a crucial domain to project ideas in,’ says Koolhaas, who regularly explores two-dimensional design through OMA’s research and design arm, AMO. ‘Architecture is also a domain to project ideas in. The similarity [between the disciplines] is about ideas, and these can take any form.’ §

INFORMATION

oma.eu

americanexpress.com

Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi’s office – NLÉ, meaning ‘at home’ in Yoruba – is based in two cities built on and from water: Lagos, in the country of his birth, and Amsterdam, the city where Adeyemi settled after a long stint at Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Since its inception in 2010, NLÉ, just like the city of Lagos, has kept expanding, mostly over water, with the architect highlighting the importance of a new practice – more open-ended and versatile, not exclusively imposed from the top down but rather more conversant and recombinant, accepting of informality and of citizens’ imagination. Something we need now more than ever, when we come to regroup, rethink and rebuild after the pandemic. Adeyemi and Paola Antonelli discussed the potential of architecture in helping communities cope with urban density and withstand climate change by acknowledging the power of water.

Paola Antonelli: In 2007, while you were still working at OMA, you published an essay in the journal Log, entitled Urban Crawl. It was an occasion for the western/northern hemisphere to consider cities in developing countries as paragons and paradigms for the future, and also argued for a radical rethinking of the position of architecture.

Kunlé Adeyemi: The article was written shortly after my post-professional degree at Princeton, and I published it with a view in mind. My thesis at the time was on the role of market economies in rapidly emerging cities. I had a lot of reflection around the impact of cities of the Global South and how they would become more important in the future. It was a prompt to rethink our perceptions of cities, understanding that there’s a critical point where cities, just out of the growth of population and economy, begin to become a lot more organic in their expansion, and the nature of the performance of the city – whether economically, socially or environmentally – becomes exponential. That’s what we’re starting to see in several large, growing cities in the Global South. Without infrastructure, or with very minimal infrastructure and very minimally organised economies, they start to regulate themselves, just out of sheer population growth and impact.

PA: In that same essay, you argued that ‘the space of architecture as we know it is getting smaller and smaller’. How do you consider that statement now, 13 years later? Has architecture changed?

KA: I think there’s been a lot of changes in the practice, but not enough change to cope with the speed of development that is necessary to accommodate the growth of human population and the environmental impact of this growth. We’re also losing grip if we do not realise the implication of acting in the capacity of the public realm, as opposed to just providing solutions that are very specific to individuals. In my view, architecture is more of a service, and the client is really more public than private lately. Whatever we do even for private clients has an impact on a larger community.

PA: Would you call that acting in the public realm politics?

KA: For sure. There’s a lot of influence on politics, and political influence on architecture. And I think there are a lot more people that have done more specific work in that realm. In our way of understanding the role of architects or architecture in the built environment, we developed a tool for analysing this sort of urban dynamics, which we call the seven DESIMER Factors. Typically, the architect is trained to think about design as the first solution for addressing any problem, but we would like to analyse the context and the requirements through seven factors – Demographics, Economics, Sociopolitics, Infrastructure, Morphology, Environment, and Resources – that actually drive development. Indeed, politics and social context, even the shape and the topography of the environment are huge factors, and design is only a tool to orchestrate these complex dynamics into built form and to understand programme. Essentially, these factors are divided into two areas of research – issues of humanity and growth, and issues connected to the environment. And that’s what this is for us. Architecture in what we stand for is about diversity and coexistence of humanity and environment.

PA: Are you keeping humans and environment separate because of the agency that humans have over the environment?

KA: Yes. You keep them separate, but you also look at them together. It’s about their coexistence. Whereas as a standard practice we understand people as our clients, but we also at the same time look at the environment as our client.

PA: In 2014, you participated in the MoMA exhibition ‘Uneven Growth’, which looked at the idea of a postcolonial city in which a bottom-up material culture leads and complements a traditional top-down idea of design. What is the role of community in the vision that you have for architecture in the future?

KA: I presented a vision of Lagos in 2050, centred around three points: water, transportation and energy. The image is somewhat our general prototypical vision of what a city that has embraced water looks like. We were beginning to understand the role of climate change and the impact on the environment on our cities. Eighty per cent of our major cities and capitals all around the world are by the waterfront, by oceans, rivers, lakes. Our view is that the development and evolution of humanity are going to become somewhat more aquatic, there will be an increase in that relationship between cities and water. We should learn not to continue to fight it, but learn to live with it.

PA: Are you saying that we will need to expand over water?

KA: There are different conditions, all kinds of very specific site conditions all over the world. We hear a lot about cities that are by the sea or by the ocean, the threat of sea levels rising, the frequent flooding. There are also inland wet areas, wetlands, marshy areas, where groundwater is rising – they need different approaches. We think, generally speaking, that in the real estate that we allocate to the development of cities, the portion that relates to water should increase. We need to accommodate more water basins and have fewer hard surfaces. Even if it’s simply about increasing a drainage system and having more canalisation, that is already an approach to dealing with water and learning to live with it; having more room for capturing rainwater as part of our landscape and urbanscape; actually building on water as a form of habitation, and also reducing land reclamation, which is very, very invasive – it’s expensive, and literally reduces the area of water in a region.

PA: Your Makoko Floating School is a famous, and also tragic project. Can you tell us about the community and the school itself please?

KA: Makoko Floating School is a project that began in 2011. I was voluntarily trying to research affordable housing and offering my service to the Lagos State Government. I started to look at what may be considered the cheapest dwellings in a city like Lagos. I realised people who live in Makoko – in what would technically be defined as slums – on water, with very poor quality of construction, were able to build so much out of so little. I got the opportunity to visit the place, and was completely blown away by what I experienced there. There was, of course, a lot of hardship, a lot of environmental challenges but being in the community itself is a totally different experience. One of the community members I met said they would like an extension to an existing school. I thought that if we could improve on their building system, it could be a great collaboration. So we started conceptualising. At some point in the process, we were thinking of building on stilts, like they did. But a few months after we began, there was a huge storm in Lagos, and it occurred to me that a lot of the parts of Lagos that were on land were actually going to be flooded. It is a very vulnerable environment for a very large city of nearly 20 million people. Even though people in Makoko were building on water, they were still affected by the tidal change, so we developed the floating solution that adapted to the tide.

PA: In 2016, however, a seasonal storm destroyed the school. What did you learn from it?

KA: There’s a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the situation surrounding the collapse, especially from the public realm. A lot of people considered it a disaster, a tragedy, maybe out of our control, but it wasn’t that, and we have a full report on our website about the circumstances that led to it. The building was a test, it was a prototype. We had worked on it with the community and we saw it coming to its end. It was not literally brought down just by the storm; we had had many storms in the past. What we learned is to be completely relentless in innovation, and innovating means understanding that failure is also part of the learning curve.

PA: Indeed, you transformed the experience into an evolving construction system. It had different prototypes, shown at the Biennale in Venice, in Bruges (Belgium), in Minjiang (China), and the latest one is in Cape Verde.

KA: We’ve evolved Makoko Floating School into what we call Makoko Floating System, which is really a simple way to build on water by hand. We learned from the people of Makoko and then improved the process into a flat-pack system, prefabricated, easy to assemble, disassemble, highly engineered to European codes, which you can apply internationally. We’ve built it in five countries across three continents, tested it in different environments, tested it with different local materials, looked at the collaboration, understood different contexts and how it would adapt in its different variations and uses.In Bruges, we had some covering with panels, and it was used as a school. In China, we had bamboo. In Mindelo in Cape Verde it’s a floating music hub. It’s in the ocean now. We’ve made a lot of improvements to what started out as a handcrafted, guerrilla-style project. And I want to mention that while it was a school – an incidental use at the time – the project was actually funded and supported by the United Nations Development Programme under the Climate Change Adaptation programme. So it’s always been a project about climate change adaptation, about response to the environment, and the school was an example of the use of it.

PA: A very inspiring example, however, because it was in such a creatively energetic community.

KA: The community is the origin and the key, and the source of the potential of using the system as a way to develop a much improved quality of life for the poor or the rich, it cuts across social classes. It’s about local materials. It’s about local responsibility, understanding what is within means, and maximising it. So that’s where we’re at now, where you can use the system for housing, a resort, a library, all kinds of facilities – on water.

PA: What has the Covid-19 crisis taught you?

KA: There has been the opportunity to step back a bit, slow down, re-evaluate what is important, understand, try to be more efficient, connect with family, change my diet [laughs]. So it’s been a great time to be reflective, as with most people, but also to try to develop the focus on what we think would be important.

PA: Your research right now is about African cities and water.

KA: Water cities as a body of work for the last nine years, since we began Makoko Floating School. We immediately saw the potential, both globally and also for the African continent. I’ve continued the research at the various institutions where I’ve taught. We took students to different cities: Durban with Harvard, Abidjan with Columbia, Lagos with Cornell, and we looked at Mindelo with Princeton. There’s a whole world. A lot of African cities that we’ve been focusing on are on water – the African Water Cities Project. The students are looking at different approaches to tackle the urgent challenges we’ve identified from the research – the adaptation of cities to the changing climate.

INFORMATION

A version of this story appeared in the October 2020 issue of Wallpaper*, guest edited by Design Emergency. A free PDF download of the issue is available here.

nleworks.com

Liberation Day, on 5 May, is usually a joyous occasion in the Netherlands. To mark the anniversary of the end of Nazi German occupation, parades and concerts are held throughout the country, the streets teem with revellers and the skies set ablaze with fireworks. Sadly not this year – with the fight against Covid-19 under way and the nation in lockdown, none of the usual celebrations went ahead. In their place was a performance of 300 illuminated drones above the city of Rotterdam, flying in formation as though a flock of starlings.

The performance, titled Franchise Freedom, was the brainchild of Amsterdam-based artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, collectively known as Drift. With kinetic sculptures that evoke the blooming and fading of flowers, the behaviours of flocking birds, and mankind’s yearning to fly, Drift have long explored the intersection of nature and technology. Franchise Freedom, which uses a specially developed algorithm to mimic autonomous swarm behaviour, premiered at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2017. It has since flown in Amsterdam to coincide with the artists’ solo exhibition at the Stedelijk, at Burning Man, and at Kennedy Space Center for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. The Liberation Day flight, however, was the first to take place under less than jubilant circumstances.

Gordijn says that the sense of isolation that many of us have experienced of late compelled Drift to put on this special iteration, which came together at short notice. Digital experiences, advanced as they have become, can’t quite replicate the physicality of live performance, she believes. Through Franchise Freedom, Drift aims ‘to bring people together and help them feel connected.’

And make people feel connected it did – after soaring back and forth along the River Maas, the drones gathered above the swan-like silhouette of Erasmus Bridge and formed a giant heart shape. It pulsed bright red, spinning on its axis so as to be seen from all angles, and finally changed colour to resemble the horizontal tricolour of the Dutch flag. Though subtler and shorter lived, this was a performance to rival the most elaborate fireworks display, with greater emotional impact too.

From Erasmus MC hospital, a stone’s throw from Erasmus Bridge and the coordination point for all intensive care units in the Netherlands, the performance had an added dimension: a new, introspective soundtrack by composer Joep Beving, who performed it live on the piano. It was a special gesture of hope and encouragement for everyone working day and night to ensure the freedom and health of others, explain the artists.

Gordijn points out that Franchise Freedom is predicated on a thought experiment: while flight connotes freedom, individual birds in a flock (and likewise, drones in a formation, and humans in society) are bound to rules and conventions that ensure collective survival. This rings particularly true in a pandemic, when personal compromises – limitations in movement for instance – are essential to communal wellbeing. ‘In this time when we’re all having to stay home, our freedom is dependent on what the bigger group is doing. We are not by ourselves, and we can’t make selfish decisions. We are one nation, and one world,’ she says.

‘And when we come out of this pandemic, we have to move together to recreate society to its full potential, instead of working against each other’, concurs Nauta.

Beyond their message of unity, the artists also hope that this performance of Franchise Freedom can reinforce our faith in the arts: ‘We want to show how important art and creativity is in these times,’ concludes Gordijn. ‘That’s what keeps us amazed and inspired, and shows us a way forward.’

A film documenting Drift's drone performance, Franchise Freedom displayed in the sky above Rotterdam for Liberation Day. Courtesy: Studio Drift

INFORMATION

Franchise Freedom is a project by Drift. studiodrift.com

The Liberation Day performance was made possible by art organisation Mothership. enterthemothership.com

Rotterdam has developed a knack for reinvention. After the city was flattened during World War II, reconstruction between 1945 and 1968 saw the rise of a new more functional urban design. The following decades experienced some radical relief with Piet Blom’s Cube House completed 1984. Then in the 1990s, Rotterdam became an open-minded testbed to rising Dutch architects OMA and MVRDV, with De Rotterdam completing in 2013, and the U-shaped Markthal in 2014.

While known for its forward-thinking approach, recently the city and its architects have been taking some interest in the past too. Historical buildings are a rarity in Rotterdam, and the time has come for preserving and preparing them for a long-term future.

The impressive Postkantoor (central post office) dating back to 1916, is one of the landmark renovation projects embracing the city’s architectural history. Developer OMNAM Group and NYC-based ODA have taken on the redesign of the mighty modern-meets-art-deco building, and ODA will be extending the site with two new contemporary buildings. The mixed use scheme, named POST, aims to give the historic building back to the people of Rotterdam, with social and retail spaces at ground level.

POST: A survivor of the Rotterdam Blitz, the Postkantoor dates back to 1916, and was originally designed by Gustav Cornelis Bremer. In an ambitious move, ODA, a studio with experience bringing contemporary design to historic buildings, will add a new 150m-high tower to the site combining hotel, residential, retail and social offerings. Local architects specialising in adaptive reuse, Braaksma & Roos Architectenbureau, will take on the restoration. ‘The success of the project is down to the courage of the developer (OMNAM Group), the local architects bringing ideas about context, and the city which was empowered to do something special,’ says Eran Chen, ODA.

A new era for the Boijmans

Elsewhere in the centre, the world-renowned Boijmans Van Beuningen museum, which moved into its stately brick, stone and copper building in 1935, has just closed for a much-needed renovation. The city of Rotterdam decided to opt for the most ambitious plan for its renovation, expected to take seven years, to not only clear it of asbestos and protect it from flooding, but also to equip it for a long future ahead with a new museum shop, dining area and more space for large-scale exhibitions.

In its time, the Boijmans has experienced many layers of growth and expansion – a modern exhibitions wing was added in 1972, and a pavilion designed by Hubert-Jan Henket in 1991. This stage of its growth is no different and the renovation project is also about renewal. After a competition, a winning architect will be selected in January 2020 to take on the creative challenge. Shortlisted architects include KAAN Architecten in association with Van Hoogevest Architecten, Mecanoo, and David Chipperfield Architects with WDJ Architecten.

In Rotterdam however, total reinvention is never far away. Driven by a necessity to provide safe storage for artworks after a series of floods, the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum has added a radical and ambitious new string to its bow with the ‘Depot’ designed by Rotterdam-based MVRDV – a mirrored ‘pot’ (as the locals have coined it) for art storage that will be open to the public to explore. Set to open in 2021, the curved building in the midst of the Museum Park has been designed to attract public interaction with its reflective façade, akin to Chicago’s much-loved Cloudgate sculpture by Anish Kapoor, and to expand the surrounding green public space.

The Depot under construction: Covering 15,000 sq m and a 40m diameter footprint widening to 60m at the top, the Depot, designed by MVRDV, includes everything you may expect from a storage facility – handling, packaging, quarantining and loading, yet it is also enlivened with exhibition spaces, a suspended concrete staircase inspired by Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and a rooftop bar and restaurant. Described as the ‘engine room’ of the museum, the Depot will also have rentable space for private collectors, as well as storage for the 151,000-strong museum collection.

The Fenix warehouse rises again

Another curious architectural object will be appearing in the Fenix Warehouse, located in Kachendrecht – the industrial port area. At the Fenix 1 warehouse, which dates back to the 1920s, Wim Pijbes, director of the Droom en Daad Foundation (translation: dream and do) has enlisted MAD Architects for a Vessel-style observation staircase and deck, set to complete in 2025. Determined to create a spectacle, backed up by the Jane Jacobs quote ‘New ideas need old buildings’, Pijbes is certain that this intervention will ‘give people a 21st century reason to come here’.

Yet along with the new, there is a clear respect for the past, and preserving the history of the architecture is integral to the plan. The swirling staircase will be at the heart of the Foundation’s Landverhuizersmuseum, a migration museum, which explores the history of Rotterdam’s role as a port for migration from Europe to Ellis Island. ‘It’s important to the city to embrace the past, because there’s very little history left,’ says Pijbes. ‘You can feel the narrative of the harbour city of Rotterdam – it’s the DNA of the city.’ Without many remaining ‘monuments’ to history across the city, Pijbes sees the Fenix warehouse, which will be restored and renovated by Bureau Polderman, and the port location as a monumental space worth celebrating.

The original 360m long Fenix warehouse, previously called the San Francisco warehouse, was designed by architect C.N. van Goor and first built in 1922 when it was named the largest warehouse in the world. It was then rebuilt in two parts in 1954 after suffering fire damage after the Rotterdam Blitz, and named Fenix (translation: Phoenix).

And while the migration-themed museum is destined for Fenix 1, at Fenix 2, local practice Mei Architects has just completed a new mixed use project – the Fenix Lofts and Fenix Dock. The project features a renovation of the two-storey warehouse into a dance school and workspaces, plus a block of cascading apartments wedged on top. Increasing density and the permeability of the building through a public walk-way, the solution is a creative approach to urban regeneration of the Kachendrecht neighbourhood.

Fenix Lofts and Fenix Docks by Mei Architects: Completed in November 2019, this renovation and redesign preserves the character of the industrial architecture while adding new layers of function with 200 high-ceilinged apartments, a dance school, workspaces and a public thoroughfare to the building. Mei Architects, established in 1994 in Rotterdam, developed expertise redeveloping former industrial buildings – from turning a steam former laundry in Delfshaven into creative office spaces and or building apartments in a former Gouda Cheese warehouse.

Creative grassroots regeneration

Regeneration has become a collective and creative enterprise in Rotterdam, and as the city grows, its modern architecture has become a base for innovation. The vast Hofplein Rotterdam train station and Schieblock office building both built in the 1950s are at the heart of a new urban and landscaping strategy by ZUS architects, who have connected the site to the centre of Rotterdam with the crowd-funded, 390m-long Luchtsingel pedestrian bridge built in 2014. The next part of the plan, a vast rooftop park atop the station, the Luchtpark Hofbogen, concluded the completion of phase one in 2018. The Schieblock office building also gained a rooftop asset, the DakAkker urban roof farm, where vegetables, honey and fruit are grown and cooked up seasonally at Op Het Dak, a restaurant designed by Studio Ossidiana. Rooftops have become an important part of the city's regeneration, and the network is celebrated each summer at the Rotterdamse Dakendagen, an ‘open rooftop’ festival following a similar format to international franchise Open House.

Rotterdam’s harbour is another area with newly-tapped urban potential. Architecture studio Goldsmith Company describes the harbour as being ‘slowly orphaned’ by the city, and one of their latest designs is part of a new plan for a ‘Foodstrip’ for food production to bring new purpose back to the area. The architects combined technology with agricultural architecture to create the Floating Farm Dairy for 40 cows, and they are currently working on two new prototypes for floating farms in Rotterdam Harbour – one for vegetables, and one for 7000 chickens.

Meanwhile an artistic approach to regeneration is happening east of the city centre in the M4H neighbourhood. Artist Joep van Lieshout, opened his atelier there back in the mid-1990s when it was a red light district, and he’s now taking the neighbourhood’s development into his own hands. After purchasing land from the city in the area, he has drawn up brutalism-inspired designs for The Brutus, a new block of artists’ studios, apartments, a restaurant, hotel and an art gallery, reflecting his artistic philosophy and directly connected to the city by a cycle path. Watch this space, he says.

Rotterdam’s residential fabric

Across the city, emerging architects have been working with the Klushuizen scheme to improve the existing stock of mostly 20th century buildings. The initiative, first launched by the city municipality in 2003, gives architects the opportunity to buy cheap, dilapidated buildings from the city in exchange for their renovation. Slowly but surely, the scheme is contributing to the overall improvement of the historic social and residential fabric of Rotterdam – over 500 houses have been purchased under the scheme since it launched, and its success has seen the scheme migrate from Rotterdam to other Dutch cities.

This DIY approach to renovation supported by Rotterdam has given emerging architects the opportunity to gain experience and grow. Architects Eklund Terbeek, Shift Architecture Urbanism and Studio Nauta have each worked on recent renovation projects that bring new function to under-appreciated historic buildings, contribute to wider neighbourhood regeneration, and are in line with urgent environmental concerns in architecture.

‘In the light of climate change challenges and the growing awareness of using resources more sustainably, the DIY housing concept has only gained more relevance and has paved the way for further experiments – like houses in vacant offices or school buildings that provide a second life to the existing, outdated, built stock of the city. After all, re-use of what is already there is the most basic, and perhaps the most crucial, principle of a sustainable city development,’ says Shift Architecture Urbanism.

Eklund Terbeek’s Gym Loft

Rotterdam-based architecture studio Eklund Terbeek has taken advantage of Rotterdam’s DIY pre-war building renovation programme. The latest project, completed in 2019, is the Gym Loft, the conversion of a former gymnastics building of an early 20th century school complex in Rotterdam North into a spacious family loft. The studio was in charge of developing the whole building complex into seven unique homes. The architects often work with older buildings, even though the projects often bring extra constraints, however they agree that in the end: ‘Context makes design richer.’

House in a School 2 by Studio Nauta

Located in the Rotterdam West area, a former primary school has been converted into a house by Studio Nauta. Initial restoration work was undertaken by the city scheme Pak Je Ruimte, then architect Jan Nauta replanned the house and worked on the interior. Currently under construction, the house is set to complete later this month.

‘The scheme has made an enormous impact on the area. Dilapidated, but beautiful, buildings have been rescued and revamped,’ says Nauta, who also notices an increase in commitment and engagement in the area, because of the hands on approach. ‘People don’t go through all the trouble of renovating a house to move out after one or two years.’

Matryoshka House by Shift Architecture Urbanism

The renovation of this house, completed in 2017, involved preserving and renovating the entire existing outer shell, except the rear façade, which was so heavily deteriorated that it needed replacement. Inside, the architects maintained as much of the original wooden flooring structure, while also opening up new double height spaces. Any leftover wood was reused in the walls of the new rooms and recovered stained glass was redistributed creatively.

The Brutus by Atelier Van Lieshout

Sculptor, artist, inventor and liberal design collective, Joep Van Lieshout, who sees the edge of Rotterdam as his playground, moved to the M4H neighbourhood when it was a red light district. As part of a city initiative to develop the area, free artists’ studio spaces were introduced – ‘Rotterdam is very supportive of artists’, says Van Lieshout. Now he is taking the neighbourhood into his own hands. He has designed a new forward-thinking development for art, living and socialising.

On his new enterprise he says: ‘Architecture’s not that difficult if you ask me. There is a lot of technology that I don’t have the skills for, but neither do many architects.’ And he also has some progressive ideas about living inspired by modernist architects that he plans to bring to life at ‘Laocoon’: ‘I like to have flexibility, if you buy a house or rent its different – if its for sale then I would prefer to say I want a kitchen 20m long and my bathtub on my balcony. I think there should be no interior walls in a house.’

Floating Farm Dairy by Goldsmith Company

In Merwehaven, Rotterdam, this floating farm for 40 cows completed in 2019. The lightweight agricultural building compactly contains technology, storage, processing and production. The dairy is the first in a ‘Foodstrip’ for food production. The architects describe the harbor as a ‘slowly orphaned’ space in the city, and bringing new industry to the area with the aim to bring producer and consumer closer. The studio is currently working on two new prototypes for floating farms in Rotterdam Harbour – one for vegetables, and one for 7000 chickens.

Floating architecture ideas have also floated beyond the Rotterdam city limits. The studio also designed a series of unrealized floating pavilions for the Tokyo Olympic Games, barges and a collective deck made of stacked containers, steel framework and a skin of polyester sheets. The structures questioned the ‘Olympic Legacy’ and how many Olympic stadiums and villages are abandoned once their main use is over. Their concept can move from country to country without a trace, and it can be easily dismantled and assembled.

A hooded cotton jersey zip-up top is the ubiquitous star of modern day parables of social inequality, youth culture, racism, privacy, fear and style. It is also part of a dance craze on TikTok where people playfully poke their legs through its sleeves.

A new exhibition curated by Lou Stoppard at the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam – open until 12 April – unpicks these ambiguities. ‘The hoodie sparks a range of emotions, communicating all manner of social and cultural ideas and nuances depending on the gender, geography, age, conduct and ethnicity of the wearer and, in turn, the prejudices and politics of the viewer,’ she writes. To many the hoodie simply offers protection from the cold, to others its complexities are grave.

In 2015, interested in the lack of scholarship around sportswear and sports clothing, Stoppard commissioned a series for SHOWstudio called SPORTSWEAR, which has inspired much of her approach to the show. ‘We made the series during this moment in fashion where the use of sports/street/casual-wear became really apparent yet it felt like people didn’t have the language to talk about it,’ she says. Experienced fashion journalists sniffily noted the arrival of streetwear as an affront to the sanctity of luxury. ‘I remember interviewing Nasir Mazhar and he was constantly annoyed with the terminology people would use around his work. It felt like people were really dismissive of sportswear garments despite their detailed cuts or fabric treatments; if it was in the shape of a tracksuit or a hoodie, it was written off as just that.’

The hoodie is ripe for re-evaluation in our politically agitated age. Stoppard recounts its emergence as a symbol of controversy and, as a result, has made sure to include a lot of news footage in the show: ‘There was a whole period around 2006 in the UK press when the Conservative government launched the “hug a hoodie” campaign that was hooked around ideas of social injustice, violence and youth crime. Remember the images of the London riots? Every newspaper would pick a shot of someone in a hoodie or a tracksuit to run on the front page,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of issues around race, particularly in America with cases like Trayvon Martin, where the hoodie is then reclaimed as a symbol of protest. And if you look at racist policies like stop and search in the UK and who they are targeted at, a lot of this comes down to perceptions on dress.’

The hoodie is tied to culture and subculture too. ‘Think of hip hop and its dominant influence on fashion! There were just lots of different threads that you could pull into an exhibition.’

The mixed-media show includes printed matter, photography and historical dress alongside works by artists such as David Hammons, Sasha Huber, Lucy Orta and Thorsten Brinkmann. The specially commissioned series of films by Bogomir Doringer based around his Faceless project also feature, exploring the preponderance of masked faces in the arts as well as questions around privacy and CCTV. Artist Angelica Falkeling has made an installation that looks at cotton production and the vast amount of hoodies that are manufactured year upon year.

In 2016, Troy Patterson wrote a lyrical op-ed for The New York Times asking of the hoodie: ‘Who enjoys the right to wear one without challenge?’. After reading it, Stoppard began to explore our contradictory codes of status and control. The hoodie isn’t a demonized garment in Silicone Valley – it is worn by some of the world’s most powerful, most influential men. ‘I thought a lot about how we move through the world in our clothing and who can enter any space without thinking about it, and who is questioned constantly for their choices,’ she says. Her wish is that the show acknowledges the reality of anyone who has ever experienced profiling first hand.

Upon entering the gallery, you are confronted with a display of rules and regulations from different institutions about ‘acceptable’ items of dress. Only three months ago the Netherlands’ so-called burqa ban came into affect, inspiring another strand of Stoppard’s research. ‘I hope it gets people thinking about legislation around clothing because I don’t think we realise how common it is. When people read about the burqa ban in the news they might not think it has anything to do with them if they don’t personally wear one, but actually, this issue of regulation around clothing, this constant surveillance, effects everyone,’ she says. ‘We need to push back against it.’

INFORMATION

‘The Hoodie’, until 12 April 2020
hetnieuweinstituut.n

ADDRESS

Het Nieuwe Instituut
Museumpark 25
3015CB Rotterdam

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When Philippe Parreno was a teenager, he and his friends would sneak their way through the back door of an adult movie theatre in one of the seedier parts of Échirolles, a rough suburb of Grenoble, southern France. The backstreet XXX dive was called Cinema Permanente, because porn played all day, all night.

At a public talk at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Parreno bashfully admits that watching the illicit movies acted as inspiration. In the dark, as the images writhed and morphed without sense of beginning, middle and end, so he formed his idea of what art should be. ‘We were always so alert, because we were scared of getting caught,’ he remembers. ‘But my sense of time became warped in the movie theatre. I started to think a permanent cinema is a beautiful idea.’

Parreno is here to present his new feature film, No More Reality Whatsoever, a combination of 20 years of disparate footage taken from dozens of art projects and edited together to create a ‘film of films, a seance of cinema’. The artist, who is 55, has the words ‘do so’ tattooed on his left wrist, a reference to the hypnotherapist Milton Erickson. He is soft-spoken, drinks tea over coffee, is dressed as if he might leave the cultured environs of the film festival for a quick hike along the canals of Rotterdam, and has a dry, self-deprecating sense of humour.

As he is interviewed by Andrea Lissoni, curator of film and international art at Tate Modern, Parreno speaks of ‘practising white magic, but – don’t worry – never black magic’. ‘Magical forms have an ability to articulate a disparate idea,’ he explains. ‘We’re always looking for things to make sense, but maybe there’s another way to approach them. Besides, an artist is like a shaman. A film is like a seance.’ He is not someone, you get the impression, who takes himself too seriously. Indeed, he often talks about his work playfully, as if he is creating make-believe at a child’s birthday party.

But it’s possible to be both an irreverent and a serious artist. Few contemporary artists can point to a massive retrospective at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (2013) or a large-scale solo exhibition in New York’s Park Avenue Armory (2015) or full usage of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (2016). Parreno has done these and more, and now he is turning his hand to arthouse filmmaking, with a star turn in Rotterdam.

Parreno talks of the ‘the exhibition as medium’. He is perhaps the best known member of a school of European artists who practice what in artspeak is referred to as ‘relational aesthetics’, a term coined in 1998 by the French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud (who was, at the time, Parreno’s roommate in New York). It’s the idea an artist should be the architect of a shared experience, the creator of a sensorial and transportive and essentially transient event, rather than the creator of a precious and permanent artefact. Rather than use a gallery as a hallowed space where static objects are hung in anticipation of reverence, it should be a space where we come to believe anything might happen, that disorientates our concepts of time and space, that upsets our inbuilt GPS.

‘It doesn’t matter what it is,’ he says of what he presents to the public in a gallery space. ‘It’s the way it appears that interests me. I’m interested in the nature of an image, and it’s relationship to what it’s supposed to represent. I’m interested by the production of a form in a public space, and how that form can change the public. All that stuff.’

No More Reality Whatsoever is playing directly before the latest film from the 88-year old Jean-Luc Godard, who is using IFFR to screen his new film Le livre d’image after it premiered in Cannes last year. The film is presented in the way Godard originally intended: in a specially designed replica of his home studio – Persian rugs included. The proximity pleases Parreno. ‘There was a strong movie culture where I grew up,’ he says.‘The legacy of the nouvelle vague [pioneered by Godard] and the literature around that had more of an impact in France than visual art I think.’

Parreno’s film starts with an introduction of sorts from a Rotterdam resident of Indonesian descent. The man is a Dhalang, a master of Indonesian shadow puppetry and ‘a fascination’ for the artist. The Dhalang waxes lyrical on the nature of time before singing a folkloric Indonesian hymn. He departs as Mikhail Rudy, a classical pianist, takes his seat at a grand piano, situated in front of the cinema screen, and starts playing a strange, atonal symphony, often layered on top of the film’s score.

Our 3D glasses are already in place. The split faces of a young women, a manga anime character called Annlee, is beamed onto the screen. Annlee addresses the audience directly, referencing how, in 2002, Parreno created the independent Annlee Association, transferring copyright ownership back to Annlee herself. The 3D is effective: close one eye, one huge manga Annlee is present on screen. Close the other, and a separate Annlee looms above us. The film moves from a female robot trapped alone in a hotel room to a train rolling through a rural town, the inhabitants of which stand and silently stare. We’re taking on a tour of the fishtanks in the restaurants of Chinatown New York, to a protest led by schoolchildren against the information age. ‘No More Reality’, their placards read.

Parreno was born in Algeria. Échirolles is not all that far away from Marseille, where a certain athlete called Zinedine Zidane, also bald, also of Algerian descent, and also an artist of sorts, was born and raised. Parreno is still best known for his beautiful 2006 feature film of Zidane: a movie that simply follows the movement of the player over the course of a 90-minute football match between Real Madrid and Villareal.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was co-created with the Turner-Prize winning artist Douglas Gordon, featuring a soundtrack from the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai and was shot in real-time using 17 synchronised cameras. During the creation of the film, Parreno got to know Zidane personally. I ask if he feels he shares anything with Zidane – a kinship of sorts? ‘Zidane told me that he always had to prove it, but only to himself. He was so focused on continually proving it to himself – that he was or could be a great athlete. He had to be intensely into the moment, as a great actor can also get intensely into the moment. He was able to ignore his presence totally. I think art can do that as well.’

Do you feel that need to prove yourself, I enquire. ‘Yes, totally,’ he says, with an emphatic nod. ‘I think I suffer the same as many people. The syndrome of the imposter? Imposter syndrome, yes... I have always had that. I try and combat it by trying to reinvent, by putting things in new contexts. It’s the best way I think, no?’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the International Film Festival Rotterdam website

Located in the Dutch countryside by a lake, this low-lying house designed by Studio Nauta searches for a more intimate and connected way of life. The Rotterdam-based architects, featured in the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2018, pivoted the design around the kitchen where two hearths create a social and communal space, while beyond the warm timber-lined living space, the volume cuts a soft and modest shape in the flat landcsape.

Designed for a retired couple (a paediatrician and museum guide) expecting frequent visits from children and grandchildren, this house features two long main volumes that meet at an angle – a house and a guest house. That was the main premise of Studio Nauta’s brief; the house needed to feel like a cosy family home, yet also open up into a large house that could accommodate guests comfortably for long periods of time.

‘It had to cater to a wide range of occupations – not feeling big when occupied by one person and not feel small when fully occupied with 15 people, says Jan Nauta, architect and founder of Studio Nauta. ‘Sometimes the main house and the guest house become one fluid entity and sometimes they operate in isolation.'

The point where the two volumes meet becomes an architectural pivot that brings people together spatially and socially. Dwellers and guests find a natural meeting point – perhaps in the late morning, as everyone slowly rises in their own time at the weekend – where the long kitchen hunkers low across the space, with two fires at either end – one for warmth and one for cooking, creating a cosy atmosphere.

‘The act of keeping a fire – or in this case two fires – at the very centre of the house suggests a way of living and an architecture that is both visceral and tangible,’ says Nauta.

His aim was to create an architecture that celebrated human contact, socialising and a return to a simpler way of life. Smooth interiors and seamless architecture make life at the House on the Lake even more effortless. Cross-laminated timber interiors elevate the soft and light atmosphere and window frames sit flush against the walls.

Nauta’s favourite interior detail is the windowsills: ‘A single piece of CLT wood serves several functions; it is a bench, part of the wall separating the interior from the exterior and also the window frame,’ he explains.

With the House on the Lake, Studio Nauta contribute to a discourse of architects who have sought to quietly build bridges between living and nature: ‘We looked at many references including projects by Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen and Jørn Utzon. The Louisiana Museum by Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert with its extraordinary symbiosis with the landscape was probably the key reference.’

While the house is large, it is also modest in its shape and form that echoes the horizontality of the flat Frisian landscape. Respecting this delicate natural site, was the main challenge for the architects. Nauta camped out there for a few days before he begun designing to experience the place, the light and its atmosphere.

Back in the studio, the architects played around with models of the volumes they required, to reach the exact positioning of the low-lying forms that create visual connections to the lake, a village, a far off windmill and a church tower.

‘By breaking the programme into several volumes and creating new and transformable relationships between the spaces we managed to create a integral ensemble between landscape, architecture and the users,’ says Nauta.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Studio Nauta website

The Droom en Daad (Dream and Do) Foundation has announced that MAD Architects has been commissioned to create its flagship Fenix project in Rotterdam; a spiraling staircase that pierces the roof of a historic warehouse to form an observation deck. Under the artistic vision of director Wim Pijbes, the former general director of the Rijksmuseum and founding director of Museum Voorlinden, the Fenix is one of the first initiatives of the city-based philanthropic art and culture foundation. Built in 1923 by the Dutch architect C N van Goor, the Fenix warehouses in the historical Katendrecht borough are contained in an enormous concrete building, once used for the storage and transhipment of a variety of commodities, but ruined during Second World War.

‘We chose MAD directly, not via a competition, because we preferred to start a relationship from the very beginning,’ says Pijbes of the commission. In the 1900s, the Katendrecht peninsula, on the southern banks of the port of Rotterdam was one of the oldest Chinatowns in Europe; by appointing Beijing-founded firm MAD, this forgotten part of history will be revived. ‘Contrary to the current nondescript, international, could-be-anywhere modern architectural style where most buildings are rectangular and with a high-rise shiny facade, I wanted something rounded, organic or even feminine,’ adds Pijbes.

The futuristic, organic and sinuous design proposal certainly promises to soften Rotterdam’s rough and heavy industrial skyline. Yansong Ma, principal founder of MAD Architects explains its concept: ‘We have designed a 360-degree panoramic viewing platform on top of the warehouse as well as a staircase and ramp that connects from the ground floor to the rooftop observation deck. From a distance, the platform and staircase look like a single entity, but when it's in front of you, it stands as a sculptural work that invites you to explore. It both signifies the Fenix's witnessing of Europe's history of migration from the port and symbolises the future of the city.’ 

The design is intended as a metaphor for hope and a new perspective. ‘We want to give the visitor a dramatic viewpoint on the river, to evoke the feeling of getting aboard a ship that brings you to the other side of the ocean to start a new life,’ Pijbes explains.

The Fenix will be the first cultural building in Europe designed by a Chinese architectural studio, say the organisers. MAD is one of the few practising in the West – from its 2012 Absolute Towers in Toronto to the more recent Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. ‘The West has been regarded as a role model by the rest of the world since the Industrial Age. There is no doubt that it is advanced in many aspects: technology, design and lifestyle. Hence, there have not been many firms from the East, especially from China, who have practised there,’ he says. ‘Now, we want to bring our Eastern design philosophy – the correlation between humans and nature – to Rotterdam.’

When completed, the Fenix will portray the stories of the docks’ millions of migrants through an art collection on the topic of ‘movement’. The ground floor of the warehouse will offer creative, culinary and cultural activities.

INFORMATION 

For more information visit MAD Architects website

While it often cedes the spotlight to nearby Amsterdam, design surprises are hardly in short order among the ports of Rotterdam. The newest opening in this charming, unassuming city, is Héroine Restaurant and Bar, an addition to Het Industriegebouw (The Industrial Building), an eminent post-war era building reclaiming its original grandeur by playing host to a variety of dining and retail concepts.

With an expansive high-ceilinged space serving as their canvas, the team at Modiste Studio opted to show reverence to the original design of the building (a modernist creation of the late Dutch architects Hugh Maaskant and Willem van Tijen) by leaving its raw elements as focal points. Smooth concrete floors and wrap-around wooden paneling bask in ample natural light drawn in by dramatic metal-framed windows. A polished oak bar and chrome-accented furniture inspired by the late American interior designer Warren Platner add a striking sense of 1970’s opulence and glamour.

The backdrop and surroundings now set, guests are can choose between a four, five, or seven-course meal inspired by celebrated wines and decadent cuisine from around the world. Led by chef Michael Schook and sommelier Fred de Neef, the menu rotates often and is never publicly listed. However, previous guests have indulged in dishes such as smoked celeriac with egg yolk and pine nut tapenade, or tostadas with chicatanas and avocado. 

This element of secrecy behind the ever-changing menu items is part of the culinary experience at Héroine, something owner and restauranteur Eva Eekman certainly intended.

ADDRESS

Kipstraat 12

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A famous saying credits the Dutch for having literally created the Netherlands. This does justice to Holland’s formidable man-made infrastructure that renders buildable the land – half of which would have otherwise been regularly flooded. Today, as climate change causes sea levels to rise, floods are becoming a global challenge. With 75 per cent of the world’s ever-growing megacities located in delta areas, large-scale construction on water seems to be only a matter of time.

Dutch designers, architects and developers are already pioneering this next step: in Rotterdam, one of the world’s biggest ports, the team at property developer Beladon combines expertise in maritime technology and agriculture to build floating farms for alternative fresh food production. Public Domain Architects has proposed floating homes as a solution for a flood-prone new development area – the buoyant Harbour Loft Apartments will simply move up and down in sync with the water.

Reinforcing Rotterdam’s reputation as an innovation hub, Aqua Dock – a cooperative venture involving the municipality, the port authority and the RDM Centre of Expertise of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences – provides a test site for innovation in floating structures.

The Schoonschip by architecture firm Space & Matter is a design for a sustainable floating neighbourhood in northern Amsterdam

Meanwhile, the emerging Floating Community in the city’s Rijnhaven area gets ready to host a flock of Wikkelboats. These floating versions of the already popular Wikkelhouse – a modular house built with multiple layers of waterproofed cardboard – will act as a showcase for new products and services that reduce the carbon footprint while improving the quality of life.

Amsterdam saw its first floating neighbourhood rise in 2011 in Ijburg. Today, researchers from MIT are collaborating with the local Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions to develop a fleet of autonomous multi-purpose boats for Amsterdam’s canals, while architects at Space & Matter and project managers at Waterloft have put together a building group to create a new sustainable floating neighbourhood for some 46 families.

Opportunities for experiments with floating architecture are emerging across Europe. In France, a recent competition Reinventing the Seine has made 41 underused riverside sites in Paris, Rouen and Le Havre available for creative revision. As a result, Paris’ existing floating hotspots – the Josephine Baker swimming pool, the Petit Bain concert venue, and the OFF hotel – will be joined by a bakery, a waste management facility and an urban art centre. Shared by Paris and Le Havre (a major port at the Seine estuary) will be the Barges & Berges project with youth hostels, a co-working space and a sports centre housed on stilt structures and barges.

Two projects for London – Denizen Works’ floating church and community hub that will navigate between the city’s brownfield redevelopment areas and Gensler’s proposal for UK Parliament’s temporary quarters on the Thames – contribute to the world’s rapidly expanding catalogue of new waterborne architecture.

Here, we scope out some of the most innovative concepts, experiments and projects floating on the horizon.

Barges & Berges, Paris and Le Havre, France
A collaboration between BRS Architectes Ingénieurs, Nicolas Lombardi Architecture and YG Marine Design, this project is shared between two cities located on the river Seine. Two large docked barges will accommodate youth hostels, while two mobile barges will seasonally switch functions that include a summer school, additional residences, the hybrid of a café and a conference space, co-working spaces and a sports centre.

Floating Farms, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Beladon, a specialist in designing sustainable buildings and landscapes on the water, proposes three kinds of floating structures adapted to producing dairy, vegetables and eggs. The first Floating Farm opens in Rotterdam in early 2018. According to CEO Peter van Wingerden, this will be a perfect test location, yet the real demand for alternative food production is in the rapidly growing cities in Asia and Africa.

Temporary UK Parliament, London, UK
Architecture firm Gensler proposes a space and cost effective solution to enable a six-year-long decant of the Westminster Palace for its long overdue refurbishment works. The concept colocates both Houses of Parliament in a 250m long floating structure that takes inspiration from the magnificent timber roof of the Westminster Hall commissioned by Richard II in 1393. According to Gensler, the structure can be built in British shipyards and floated along the Thames to be assembled on the river in front of the Palace.

Floating Church and Community Hub, London, UK
Designed by Denizen Works with Turks Boatbuilders, naval architect Tony Tucker and Jeckells the Sailmakers, this hybrid of a church and a multi-functional hub will circulate between the new communities in London’s brownfield regeneration areas. Inspired by the church organ bellows and the pop-up sleeping pods of vintage VW camper vans, its distinctive roof will use two layers of translucent glass fibre fabric sandwiched around a carbon-fibre frame.

Recycled Park, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Another component of the emerging Floating Community in Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven, the Recycled Park is a collaborative effort initiated by Ramon Knoester of WHIM architecture. The project aims to retrieve plastic waste from the Nieuwe Maas river before it reaches the sea, and use it to design plant- and marine fauna-friendly platforms for a floating park.

Moulin Seine, Paris, France
Seine Design (architects) and Zoom (landscape designers) teamed with a bakery and an expert in river tourism to design Paris’s first floating bakery and pastry shop with a roof garden. The bread making process will be put on public display; three electric shuttles will be used for delivery and as pleasure boats.

Schoonschip, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Space & Matter is involved in developing a new sustainable floating neighbourhood in Northern Amsterdam. Thirty homes for 46 families will be connected by a jetty serving a public space and designed to orient all houses for optimal views. To ensure variety, the team proposes five different houseboat typologies that can be further adapted by each family.

Wikkelboat, Rotterdam, Netherlands
The first Wikkelboat premiered in May 2017 in the Red Apple Marina, the only pleasure harbour in central Rotterdam. A collaboration with the Amsterdam-based creators of the Wikkelhouse, it functions as a meeting, sleep-over and service point and serves as a prototype of the Floating Community, ‘the world’s first floating carbon neutral village’, to be unveiled in spring 2019.

Roboat, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Researchers from MIT partnered with several institutions in the Netherlands to design a fleet of authonomous boats for the Amsterdam’s canals. Besides transporting goods and people, they will also be able ‘to cooperate to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as on-demand bridges’, explains Carlo Ratti, MIT’s professor of the practice of urban technologies.

Harbour Loft Apartments, Rotterdam, Netherlands
This project for a flood-prone new development area combines floating homes by Public Domain Architects with the creation of an eco-friendly river bank, on which the so-called ‘tidal park’ will foster riverside wildlife. Built off-site as prefabricated kit homes, Harbour Loft Apartments will be towed to the location by mid-2018.

'I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,' recalls Sjarel Ex, director of Rotterdam’s Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, thinking back to when he first set eyes on MVRDV’s design for the institution’s new space.

With the museum’s encyclopaedic, city-owned collection of European art constantly threatened by floods, a new storage facility was a matter of urgency for the Boijmans. Ex also saw this as an opportunity to gather the entire collection – currently scattered across several facilities – in one centrally located venue, and open it up to the public. While his Museum has currently the ability to show a mere 8% of the collection, the new Depot will be the world’s first art storage facility that makes a staggering 99% of the collection accessible to public.

The design by MVRDV goes way beyond the core task of facilitating public access, while ensuring due security and appropriate climate control for the highly varied collection. It provides Rotterdam with a city-scale landscape-enhancing device.

The six-storey, 15,500 sq m Depot dissolves into its surroundings, due to the curved reflective facade that turns it into a giant mirror, which reflects everything, from visitors walking in, to the entire Museum Park, and Rotterdam’s ever-changing skies. Occupying a former gravel plot adjacent to the original Boijmans van Beuningen building, the project will also use the newly created plaza as a canvas for large-scale artistic interventions. These will be amplified by the curved mirror.

Reflective, double-curved glass panels are the project's greatest challenge, confirms MVRDV’s principal Winy Maas. Wishing the facade surface to appear seamless, the design team is working to reduce the gaps between the panels, from the customary 20mm, to a mere eight.

The Depot’s sugar bowl shape minimises its footprint while allowing for a large rooftop terrace with a public garden that will float, like a mirage, 40m above ground. The idea of touching the ground lightly equally applies to the construction process. The foundation piles have been screwed rather than nailed into the ground, which has made them more stable and significantly reduced noise. The changing room and site office structure is raised on stilts to keep out of the way of the Museum Park’s outdoor events.

The thickness of the curved concrete shell will vary from 55cm, to 30cm towards the top. Its ground level is being cast in situ, while the use of prefabricated elements for the upper floors will speed up the process once this is done. With a further 18 months needed to complete construction, plus another six for testing, we will have to wait until late 2019 to early 2020 for this radically new experience of the museum – and of Rotterdam itself. But it will be worth it.

INFORMATION
For more information visit the MVRDV website

‘Minimal’ and ‘industrial’ are two words that spring to mind when surveying the new production kitchen-cum-restaurant for Dutch pizza evangelists, Marco Zander and Daniel van der Stel, who began flexing their culinary muscles with a festival food truck five years ago.

On a mission to create the ultimate pizza, which recently involved a ‘fact-finding’ visit to Naples, they have been purveying pizza to the crowds ever since and the vaulting, double-height space is their first fixed location.

The monastic, light-filled interior is the work of Bastiaan Kalmeyer and Chantal Schoenmakers of Rotterdam’s Instability We Trust, who have chosen to leave the raw concrete shell largely ungilded, pragmatically separating the stainless steel kitchen and its two wood-fired ovens from tables with wrap-around polished terrazzo bars. With street front seating and expansive views over workings from the mezzanine, dining at Old Scuola may not be intimate but it definitely delivers a buzz.

ADDRESS

Achterklooster 1

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Masks have consistently inspired the work of the avant-garde Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck: from the ghoulish gas masks, embellished gauze balaclavas, and facial coverings created from swathes of red hair in his S/S 1998 collection, to the gnashing, monster-like face paint designs of his A/W 2011 offering.

‘They’re something I’ve been fascinated by since my first collections,’ says the renowned Antwerp Six member, who takes inspiration from the ritualistic, performative, fetishistic and identity-thwarting power of masks. ‘All humans have a connection with them, from children dressing up, to their recent connection with terrorism. Masks are everywhere, which is why they are so fascinating.’ 

Now, as guest curator of ‘Powermask – the Power of Masks’, opening today at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, Van Beirendonck has come face to face with the source of his inspiration. The exhibition, co-curated by the museum’s Alexandra Van Dongen, features a selection of masks (with 125 sourced from the Wereldmuseum’s own collection), artworks, photographs and fashion garments dedicated to their symbolism, beauty and power.

‘The curation forms a dialogue across lots of disciplines,’ the designer explains of the diverse offering. It features ritualistic artefacts from Papua New Guinea (a consistent reference in Van Beirendonck’s own mask designs), the Ivory Coast and the Dominican Republic of the Congo, and artworks by Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Keith Haring and Inez & Vinoodh. Masks by fashion designers including Van Beirendonck’s former intern Craig Green, fellow Belgian and Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp graduate Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf, and Thom Browne also feature.

Van Beirendonck was also responsible for the sceneography of the exhibition. Pieces are housed inside glass ethnographic showcases, based on examples found in photographs capturing the Wereldmuseum in around 1900. ‘But I’ve painted them in very bright colours,’ he says, a curatorial nod to the designer’s kaleidoscopic aesthetic.

A bench is placed at the entrance to the first room of the exhibition, inviting visitors to sit and absorb its diversity. A rose-print ensemble styled on a floral mannequin by emerging London-based designer Richard Quinn shares the seat, appearing to stare at both a tribal mask and Paul McCarthy’s rabbit-head sculpture, Spaghetti Man (1993).

Throughout the exhibition, masks created by fashion designer’s gaze at the displays around them. A mannequin sporting a spooky gold skull-like mask from Maison Margiela’s S/S 2015 Artisanal collection by John Galliano, is seated staring at a 20m wide and 6m high black-and-white figurative mural adorned with masks, created by the artist Brian Kenny. Another stands wearing a phallic headpiece designed by Stephen Jones for Van Beirendonck’s own S/S 2008 collection. ‘They’ve been presented like visitors in the exhibition,’ he says. 

Two other large-scale collaborations also sit alongside Kenny’s tableau. Coco Fronsac transforms the faces in flea market-found black and white photographs with colourful painted masks. For ‘Powermask – the Power of Masks’, she has overlaid photo prints of the physicist Dr Elie van Rijckevorsel, a founding member of the Wereldmuseum, with colourful artefacts located in the exhibition. ‘I was so impressed by her work, which I came across on Instagram,’ Van Beirendonck says. 'It acts as an introduction to the exhibition.’

Charles Fréger, whose ‘Wilder Mann’ series (2010-2011) features men dressed in garb from folkoric season-welcoming European festivals, has also submitted images from his series to the exhibition. These include models dressed in badger, bear and reindeer and straw-men masks.

‘For me, the exhibition isn’t about explaining new figures or ethnographic facts,’ Van Beirendonck explains. ‘You’re meant to look around and enjoy all of its beauty.’ Now that’s a mantra we can take at face value.

INFORMATION

‘Powermask – the Power of Masks’ is on view until 7 January 2018. For more information, visit the Wereldmuseum website

ADDRESS

Willemskade 25, 3016 DM Rotterdam, Netherlands

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Due to an expanding studio, Rotterdam-based KAAN Architecten has relocated to new offices in the former De Nederlandsche Bank HQ, offering an opportunity to design a bespoke environment to suit its working needs and reflect its architectural philosophy.

The robust brick facade of the building, which stands out beside taller structures along the Maas River near the Erasmus Bridge, was originally designed by Professor Henri Timo Zwiers between 1950–1955 and has an entrance hall decorated with mosaics by Dutch artist Louis van Roode.

KAAN Architecten partner Dikkie Scipio wanted to create a space which would encourage sharing of knowledge and also bring back to life the existing architectural identity of the building.

Inside, the industrial-style concrete space has a wide rectangular plan of 1,400 sq m with high ceilings and large windows which cast light into the core of the building. Concrete columns delineate the space – as do vast connecting corridors between meeting rooms, informal spaces and an open-plan working area for the architects at the heart of the design.

The new building has an architectural heritage of its own, which the team looked to adapt for over 80 work stations and refine with new materials, while preserving its character; dark walnut surfaces and floors have been used to create a velveteen contrast to roughly exposed concrete ceilings and columns.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the KAAN Architecten website

A grey pixelated cloud rises from Rotterdam's street level to form the city's latest architectural addition. The Timmerhuis, created by Dutch super-practice OMA is an all-encompasing response to several starting points; it is an inner city, urban structure that unites office, public space and residential; it was conceived as a beacon of sustainability; and it is also a reflection on a city's architectural identity. 'It is informal and monumental at the same time,' explains OMA's partner in charge Reinier De Graaf. 'It is a mirror of its own identity.'

Timmerhuis sits adjacent to a municipality establishment dating from the 1950s, on a site symbolising, in a way, the reconstruction of post-war Rotterdam. The plot flags up the city's particular urban identity; its flattened city centre meant that a large part of Rotterdam had to be completely rebuilt. 

Now carefully designed for its plot, the new building's biggest part is occupied by city hall offices. The structure's cascading form culminates into two peaks that house 84 residential units. The series of apartments feature sky patios boasting exceptional views over the city (a rare luxury in central Rotterdam).

OMA's design forges close relationships with its context, as new and old blend physically and symbolically. The architects have used the city museum's archive to create striking tapestries adorning carefully designed interiors that cater for a diverse array of office typologies – open plan, meeting rooms, 'break-out' spaces, and work cubicles, to name a few. They have also turned part of the original municipality building's ornamental brick façade into an interior wall, reminding users of the site's historical heritage.

On the ground floor, however, the building reveals a more public front. The 'passage', an interior thoroughfare, dissects the space to connect the existing city hall premises and the Eastern portion of the city centre. A new museum showcasing the city's archive is set to open in February in a second atrium. Cafes and shops complete Timmerhuis' contribution to the surrounding street life.

As part of the brief, this is one of the country's most sustainable buildings to date, explain the architects. 'It had to be the most sustainable mixed-use building in the Netherlands – and it is. The components are recyclable,' says De Graaf, 'this was the main idea for sustainability.' Its structurally efficient modular form also contributes to this agenda.

Seen against the backdrop of the city's skyline, Timmerhuis 'dissolves into Rotterdam,' adds De Graaf; visually, physically, as well as symbolically. 

INFORMATION

For more information on OMA visit the website

Photography: Ossip van Duivenbode

Sound the gong – Maarten Gielen of Rotor has just been awarded the Maaskant Prize for Young Architects 2015 in Rotterdam. The co-founder of the renowned Brussels design collective is the worthy recipient 'in recognition of the way he explores the theme of material flows, translating it into concrete designs that convey a poetic message and, at the same time, confront the public with current social issues', explains the jury.

The biannual Maaskant Prize, chosen by a different panel of three judges every time, alternates with its namesake 'older' sibling (which is awarded to a more established architect every other year).

In 2015, the jury was looking for a 'talent under 36', to be approved by all board members unanimously. The winner not only met the foundation's primary criteria, but was also someone whose work, the panel felt, reflects and influences the current economic, cultural and social climate, helping to set the field's agenda.

'The economic crisis poses a new reality for the younger generation [of architects]. How can architects help to solve global problems such as climate change, food shortages, social inequality and vacant real estate?', asked the jury members.

'At the same time, the crisis is also opening up opportunities – unleashing new energy and impetus among architects. Job shortages unexpectedly create space – to reflect, to dream and think "Where do we go from here?" We were looking for architects with a standpoint inspired by a sense of critical optimism, people who were not afraid to venture from well-trodden paths, and who understood the need for experiment, especially now.'

Rotor, a collective founded in 2005 by Gielen, Tristan Boniver and Lionel Devlieger, currently comprises nine members of staff, all driven by a shared fascination for material flows. In their hands – in re-contextualising the things we take for granted and presenting them from a fresh perspective – reuse, recycling and waste material have been given new meaning.

Projects that helped Rotor shoot to fame include the 'OMA/Progress' exhibition at the Barbican, where they turned the studio inside out – even using rubbish salvaged from waste bins – to establish a personal connection and showcase projects that provide insight into the firm's design processes. The very successful 2013 Oslo Architecture Triennale, entitled 'Behind The Green Door', was also their brainchild. The project challenged the catchall concept of sustainability by means of presenting 600 'green-labelled' projects as conversation pieces.

'The designers are empathic but their work is light, not cumbrous', added the jury. 'We see this as an attribute because it makes the work accessible to a wide audience.' Their ability to unveil the poetry in the commonplace and to create interventions that make us look, means that this is just the start for the inspiring practice. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Maaskant Prize’s website

A royal visit marked the 10th anniversary of Dutch artist Simon Heijdens’ Lightweeds last week when King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands visited the Chicago Cultural Centre.

The royal couple were there on official state business, but taking over the stage - both literally and figuratively - were the living light trees of Heijdens’ site-responsive installation.

Lightweed, as the piece is titled, first appeared in Rotterdam and has since taken over the walls of Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, Cannes, Amsterdam and Salt Lake City, to name but a few; about 50 installations in the past 10 years. This latest incarnation in Chicago is another significant growth of its already impressive lifespan.

Like the organisms they reflect, these digital beings grow and live in response to the actual sunlight and precipitation from the world outside, effectively recapturing the space - the architecture - they now inhabit through virtual (rather than physical) means. (See Lightweeds in motion here.)

'To have the plants grow along the King’s speech was grand, a great honour,' Heijdens told Wallpaper*. An impression which is surely mutual, such is the wonder these light beings incite.

Alas, the artistic paradox of using technology to bring us closer to nature is simply a byproduct. The original intention was 'to soften the static surface of the built environment and open it up to make it legible again,' says Heijdens. 'To reveal a narrative about its character, place and use.'

The work is not so much about nature as an entity - a tree or plant - but nature as 'an overlap of unintentional processes that makes one place uniquely different to another,' he explains. 'As in nature, the actual shape of the plants is not the point but just a physical excuse, it’s not about what it is but about what it does.'

The creative dialogue between Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek and restaurateur Piet Hekker is 18 years in the making, resulting in no less than nine Bakkerswinkel lunch rooms and cafés across the Netherlands, each reflecting its individual location, edifice and personality. For the opening of its tenth location in Rotterdam, going bigger, better and even more striking was the only way to go, elevating the well-liked concept to feel more ‘like a restaurant instead,’ reflects Hein Eek. Accordingly, a large copper bar takes centre stage, with foldable lighting fixtures, a two-toned cupboard with interlocking shelves and a stunning Tree Trunk Table furnishing the rough-luxe venue. On the menu – as always – are the fresh, high-quality organic cakes, pies, sandwiches, scones and quiches that we’ve come to love from this Dutch favourite.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

Oostplein 223A
Rotterdam
Netherlands

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Jeroen Musch and De Bakkerswinkel

Sited near Rotterdam's soaring cable-stayed bridge at the edge of the water, Hotel Mainport's dark façade - created by MAS Architecture - complements the futuristic face of the city with its wide glass windows that offer grand views of the largest seaport in Europe. Designed by interiors specialist, Feran Thomassen, the interiors of the 215-room Inntel Group property are sultry and dramatic with rich fabrics and deep colours. Every floor is different, with North American, Arctic and European themes subtly incorporated. Added perks are a full service spa and the quay-level cocktail bar that features floor to ceiling windows.

ADDRESS

Leuvehaven 77
3011 EA Rotterdam

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'Rotterdammers' are not used to market halls. 'The Dutch don't have a tradition for this type of market,' says MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. 'Outdoors ones, yes, but not big, indoor ones.' This, however, is about to change, as the striking new Markthal, designed by Maas and his partners Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, has just opened its doors to Rotterdam's food-loving visitors. 

The new building ambitiously brings together a food market and housing in one clean, curvy stroke. Its unmistakable arched outline marks the city centre's northern edge, spanning a footprint of 12,000 sq m. 

Combining a busy food market with residential may not seem an obvious move, but it was always a key part of the plan. 'The residential element was part of the brief,' explains Maas. 'The city centre lacks housing.' New housing in downtown Rotterdam is indeed part of the authorities' strategy to bring people back into the heart of the city and this large-scale project is an important more. Nestled in a gentrified area that is evolving fast, the Martkhal flies the flag of change.

Over 250 apartments - a mixture of rentals and privately owned units - accompanied by underground parking offering no less than a hefty 1200 lots are available within. The scheme's size and ambition didn't faze the team. 'Trying to use housing for other purposes has somehow always been in our genes,' says Maas. 'Contradictions as well, and working with density. "Cute-ification" is not always the proper answer for a city, which is a bit rough, like Rotterdam.' 

The food element was of course of seminal importance. MVRDV looked at the food markets of Barcelona for inspiration, looking to adapt the concept 'in the best Rotterdam tradition', explains Maas. The team's response was to invert the more traditional models of market halls (lower structures, surrounded by taller buildings), which resulted in the current design's grey slab-clad arched shape. It was a challenging one to build, but construction was possible using tunnel-making methods up to the 11th floor and then adding the top floor as a 'lid'. 

'This is much more dramatic and also gives an answer to the scale of the plaza,' says Maas. The structure is located right at the heart of historical Rotterdam, next to its medieval church and where the river Rotte's dam used to be. The site was flattened after the war's bombing and a train track was put through it, before it was covered up, resulting in a large plaza around which taller buildings started to spring up. Rotterdam life slowly grew around it. 

A tennis-racket-style steel cable and glass structure covers the open sides, protecting the merchants from the elements. It was designed to be flexible enough to withstand intense weather conditions. Inside, some 96 stalls dot the surface, with large supermarkets and restaurants lining the sides, championing Dutch produce and creating a new foodie hub for the city's discerning inhbitants and guests.

A colourful bespoke art piece - the Horn of Plenty - by Dutch artist Arno Coenen decorates the arch internally, the colours built into the panels using Pixar Animation Studios' latest high tech software. Beautifully lit at night, it brings the structure to life, when the market is closed.    

With the beacon-like vertical tower of the Erasmus Bridge arcing powerfully over Rotterdam's waterfront and the myriad lights of Wilhelminapier signaling newfound vitality, the final touch was a place to sit back and take it all in. Enter Nhow Rotterdam, the third outpost from the Nhow (New Generation of Hotels) brand from the Spanish NH Hotels group. Offering the same four-star specifications and insouciant spirit as its siblings, but befitting its location in OMA's imposing De Rotterdam, this hotel also enjoys the forward-thinking and contemplative design of its creator Rem Koolhaas. The 278-room hotel is flooded with light, and peppered with Nhow's trademark humour. Rooms feature Nespresso machines, smart TVs and Montis Lazy Bastard chairs. In addition to the hotel's formal functions (which include nine expandable meeting and event spaces), it also showcases the work of local artists and offers an ideal base to explore the surrounding harbour.

ADDRESS

Wilhelminakade 137
3072 AP Rotterdam
Netherlands

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From its origins as an Amsterdam upstart to its successful expansion in Glasgow and London, Citizen M's fifth property is a homecoming of sorts, and sees the hotel brand return to the Netherlands to take its place next to Rotterdam's Old Harbour. Unlike previous properties, the group this time collaborated with real estate developer Maasstede, although its characteristic affordable luxury ethos has still been retained. Blending functionality with effortless style, the hotel's concrete-clad lobby and open spaces have been decked out with Vitra furniture and are peppered with pieces by artists Gijs Frieling and Paul Beumer, while a series of shelves, occupied by thoughtfully curated objects and literature from Amsterdam bookstore Mendo, offer a candy shop for the artistically curious. Digital check-in and a 24-hour communal canteen offer convenience that extends to the rooms, each equipped with a super king-size bed and a rain shower. In addition to new properties in London, CEO Rattan Chadha is expanding to New York, Paris and South-East Asia.

ADDRESS

Gelderse Plein 50
Rotterdam 3011 WZ

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Blurring the boundaries between society and nature, this year’s International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam calls for a new approach to city-making, under the curation of Dutch landscape architect Dirk Sijmons. The theme, Urban by Nature, is explored through 96 projects in the main exhibition site at the Kunsthal, next door at the Natural History Museum, and in city-wide installations and interventions laid on to coincide with the IABR.

The Kunsthal’s five exhibitions are designed by Herman Verkerk, Paul Kuipers and Michiel Zegers, with graphics by Experimental Jetset. There’s an imaginative use of pale timber raised beds (popular with vegetal growers) filled with moss, floor-to-ceiling tree trunks, and boxes of stone and sand. This ‘nature’ is juxtaposed with stainless steel shelving with exhibition boards attached, with the most eye-catching graphics being an eco-urban timeline on a vertically striped wall. 

The Natural History Museum’s show, Pure Resilience, attempts to illustrate how resilient the natural world can be in the city. The centrepiece is the faithful reconstruction of a waterborne nest that had been made by a local swan out of plastic and other urban detritus. 

Now in its second year, the ZigZagCity architecture festival is an alternative tour of the city past some delightfully quirky interventions, with the 5km route marked out in purple ribbon by Studio VollaersZwart. A good place to start is at Luchtsingel, the much-loved yellow wooden pedestrian walk-way, which has been extended since its launch at the previous biennale. It’s the work of architects Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman of ZUS.

Another Zigzag offering is the group of shiny red shop dummies posing along the water’s edge in front of some smart 1970s terraced housing. These figures are sunbathing, swimming and fishing, in an effort to inspire locals to do the same.

Meanwhile, in the central neighbourhood of Blaakse Bos, Piet Blom’s curious 1984 Cube Houses have had a landscaping make-over. Landscape architects Landlab have decked out the walkways with hundreds of potted plants to create a ‘green route’ from the Binnenrotte to the Oudehaven.

This route takes visitors past Rotterdam studio MVRDV’s vast and impressive Markthal. Billed as the Netherland’s first indoor market, it opens on 1 October. The Netherlands Tourist Bureau is expecting it to attract 50,000 tourists a year.

On a more modest level, the temporary pavilion commissioned by Het Nieuwe Institut back in Museum Park hopes to inspire debate about future living conditions. Bjarne Mastenbroek, founder of Rotterdam architects SeARCH, asked himself: ’What is the minimum you need for maximum quality of life?’ His answer is Yourtopia, a lawn-covered dome whose interiors are empty except for a centrepiece of lush foliage below the skylight.

IABR’s director George Brugmans is already mulling 2016’s theme: the next economy. ’Design can help us find alternative routes to the future,’ he believes.

Rotterdam's Wilhelmina Pier already plays host to architectural pieces by the likes of Renzo Piano, Mecanoo, Alvaro Siza and Norman Foster. Its latest addition, the characteristic stacked-block shape of De Rotterdam, was designed by none other than the city's own OMA architecture practice.

The tower took a lengthy 16 years to complete. Design-work began in 1997 but the late noughties financial crisis halted the project and it wasn't until 2009 that construction was able to commence - perversely, also thanks to the crisis. The recession's second dip meant that construction became more affordable.

Still, the delay hardly fazed the architects. 'Sometimes, it is good to wait,' says OMA partner Ellen van Loon, who is from Rotterdam (this complex is the first project she has completed in her hometown). 'It makes the building sharper and stronger.' This also gave them plenty of time for fine-tuning, and while the building's main concept didn't change much during the wait, it did gain height along the way.

The building's striking overall volume arrangement was carefully planned, as one would expect from OMA and Rem Koolhaas, an architect who has been known for studying variations of tall-building ever since his landmark publication Delirious New York came out in 1978. The CCTV in Beijing is another of the office's well-known explorations of the theme. Rotterdam, OMA's main base, offered excellent ground for experimentation. '[Rotterdam] was completely destroyed [during the war] and it has in its DNA an urge to build,' says Koolhaas.

De Rotterdam can be reached through a specific route, over the Erasmus Bridge (designed to critical acclaim by Amsterdam-based UNStudio), and its shape was painstakingly calculated around that route. 'It is important that it can only be approached in one way. That is why we designed it in a particular way,' explains Koolhaas. 'It was designed to work with the bridge.'

And while its considerable size is hard to ignore (it was described by OMA as a 'vertical city'), it is not what this building is all about. The city's aim for decentralisation means creating a counter-centre across the river Maas from central Rotterdam, on the Wilhelmina Pier peninsula. Koolhaas himself urged guests at the opening not to dwell on De Rotterdam's size. 'This is not simply an ambitious architectural project, it is also part of a necessity,' he said. 'We need to emphasise how much urban activity is injected in this place at this moment.'

The structure's ground floor was designed to be as open and transparent as possible; cue the central lobby's glass enclosed, dramatic cathedral-like high ceilings. Even the commercial units were created so that no blind spots and awkward rear sides appear on the ground level, in order to make for a generous, vibrant environment and true draw for the city's inhabitants.

Now, the mixed-use De Rotterdam is the largest multi-purpose building in the Netherlands, spanning a sizeable 160,000 sq m. The program – whose interiors will be fully complete in May 2014 - includes apartments (West Tower), office space, and the NHow hotel in the East Tower, which will be throwing open its doors to its first guests this January.

Watch OMA's De Rotterdam taking shape on the city's Wilhelmina Pier. Film: Paul Martens

It's hard to believe that the Dutch furniture brand Pastoe turns a momentous 100 this year. With its clean design aesthetic and playful colour theory, the enduring brand continues to stay one step ahead with a bevy of intelligent team-ups with designers like Scholten & Baijings, Shigeru Uchida and Maarten van Severen.

In honour of its big birthday, Pastoe is staging a comprehensive exhibition at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam that reveals some of the secrets behind its longevity. The show, which has been curated by Anne van der Zwagg and author Gert Staal, not only offers an unprecedented look into Pastoe's design archives, but also presents several interior concepts developed with architect Anne Holtrop, and a series of new product propositions from a stellar cast of designers.

Amongst those are heavy-hitters like Konstantin Grcic whose has explored the value of craftwork in an ever-changing future, Naoto Fukusawa, who has reduced the cupboard to its most basic form, and Claudio Silvestrin, who chose to approach furniture simply as objects. There will also be a commemorative book to boot.

And to top off its anniversary celebrations, Pastoe has launched a new rendition of one of its signature storage cabinets, original designed by Pastoes design director Cees Braakman back in 1952, and now available in three new finishes. This is a significant marker in the company's heritage, as it was storage that really set it apart from the pack in the mid 20th century.

ADDRESS

Kunsthal Rotterdam
Westzeedijk 341  
3015 AA Rotterdam

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The amount of people living in cities is increasing at rapid speed and demographers expect that 80% of the total global population will be a city dweller by 2050. So how can designers successfully guide these drastic changes? The 5th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (IABR) starts from the premise that without cities there is no future. By means of conferences, lectures, debates, films and small-scale implementations, alternative ways for making cities are being sought.

Once an architectural paradise, Europe now struggles with vacant buildings and lack of funding to realise new projects. Architects are feeling the effects of the economic crisis stronger than ever. The hand-on approach of urbanist duo Elma van Boxtel and Kristian Koreman (ZUS) is perhaps the most attractive part of the IABR. ZUS are the initiators of a project to enliven an abandoned building block close to Rotterdam’s station. With only limited resources, they have transformed the area in and around the building with interventions such as an elevated walkway, rooftop crops, and temporary pop-up restaurants. The consumer is the catalyst in this ’Test Site Rotterdam’.

A zigzag route through Rotterdam centre connects the Test Site Rotterdam with the main exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture institute (NAi). Along the route, in the hidden courtyards and alleyways of Rotterdam, a diversity of small-scale interventions such a soap bubble pavilion and the Nature on Demand installation try to throw new light on the potential of these discrete urban hotspots that often remain unnoticed by citizens.

The main exhibition at the NAi, `Making City`, is a dense conurbation of models, movies and drawings focused on architects and their relationship with the authorities. An extensive series of research projects show proposals of how to transform cities such as the Nile City, Zurich and Delhi, but also quirky strategies sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment to vitalise new urban areas such as Amsterdam`s Zuidas, Haagse Havens, and Eindhoven’s new Brainport city district. After all, a biennale is fun, and this lighthearted approach might bring a bit of happiness to the overall melancholy mood of Dutch architects.

The City of Rotterdam has come up with an ingenious way to regenerate neglected parts of the city and help its citizens get on the property ladder in a single stroke: the Urbannerdam program.

A housing scheme that has been running for the past few years, it is designed to revitalise Rotterdam’s more disadvantaged parts using small yet strategic injections of great design. With the first few houses now completed, the results are starting to show.

The plan is simple; the city sells buildings it acquired over the years to private clients at extremely competitive prices on the condition they create a premium house at minimum cost. In addition to the financial incentive, the program also pairs the new owners with an architect and follows the project through to its completion.

The result? The demand from Rotterdammers, who have spotted the opportunity to create their dream home, has been extraordinary and over 250 new homes are being created in various parts of Rotterdam. The showcases feature high-quality design and construction, breathing new life to their respective neighbourhoods.

Program manager Martijn Kok is an Urbannerdam convert himself, having just settled into a new apartment in Rotterdam’s Spangen neighbourhood that was built as part of the program. The design and construction of Kok’s home was led by local development and design duo Luc van Beers and Steve D’Aboy of 13 Speciaal, who have worked on several other Urbannerdam projects, as well as van Beers' own home in De Dichterlijke Vrijheid (which translates as ‘Poetic Licence'), the scheme’s very first block conversion.

‘Actually Urbannerdam didn't quite exist at the time of De Dichterlijke Vrijheid,’ says van Beers. ‘It involved the same group of people - we were the pilots – and, due its success, Urbannerdam was born. I was attracted to it largely because of its pioneering spirit: the idea of reclaiming and rebuilding a former ghetto with a group of young, ambitious, creative people. All base renovation costs came from a communal pot, which meant that we all had a vested interest in the project as a whole. And without the financial support from the city of Rotterdam, the numbers just wouldn't have worked, and the project would not have been feasible.’

Since those first attempts, many more followed, such as the example of Polish-born construction manager Damian Zarebski, who together with his partner, transformed a derelict old townhouse in the south district of Katendrecht into a perfect, four-level, live-and-work pad, with all the requisite mod cons. ‘It has always been a dream of mine to build my own house,’ says Zarebski. ‘Many people would be scared and run away from a dilapidated, run-down house like that. But I instantly saw the potential.’

Rotterdam’s Katendrecht used to be a port neighbourhood of questionable repute, but it is swiftly becoming the district to watch. Taking advantage of Urbannerdam, construction manager Damian Zarebski and his partner have transformed an old townhouse in the area.

The renovation took place in record time – the couple was given the keys in September 2010 and works were done by March 2011. They had five hours of architect time through the program to get them started and decide on the basics and structural issues, but after that, their friend, local architect Willem van Genugten, helped them with the execution. ‘We mixed styles, with the biggest contrast being the classical style downstairs against the modern style of the kitchen,’ says the owner. ‘The wooden floor acted as a common thread throughout the house.’

They still faced many challenges, however, with coordination being top of the list. ‘I had seven different companies working on the house at the same time,’ explains Zarebski. ‘The kitchen’s design was especially tricky. It was big and handcrafted in Poland, and the coordination between carpenters, architect and myself took time. In the end, it had to be craned into the house, through the back window.’

Great design is an integral part of the concept and the architectural community seems to be swiftly picking up on the overall scheme’s unique character. One of the most recently completed houses – the Black Pearl - won a Dutch Design Award 2011, chosen by the Dutch public, which shows how popular the scheme is.

The city has been working hard to transform its existing housing stock to suit its growing needs and Urbannerdam, alongside a wealth of new and ongoing urban developments like OMA’s mixed-use ‘vertical city’ tower De Rotterdam, is designed to pump new blood into the area’s architectural heart.

The Black Pearl was designed by Dutch designers Studio Rolf.fr and Zecc Architecten for a private client. An unusual black façade kick-started the building’s new identity, so everything, from the brick to the windows and masonry was covered in shiny black oil paint. Instead of working with the existing windows, the architects kept them in place, but punctured through a new set of minimal openings over and around them, marking the structure’s new life. ‘This creates a relationship between the original facade and the building’s new interpretation,’ they say.

Internally, the structure was completely reconfigured into an open plan interior. The architects used the existing shell simply as boundaries to enclose the new residence. From the ground level up, the building includes an office and studio space, followed by the bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and living room, topped out by an impressive roof garden.

The house’s monochromatic colour scheme – inside and out - marks a departure from the street’s more traditional dwellings, further underlining its individuality. And with the recent Dutch Design Awards 2011 win for the Public Award, which is chosen by the Dutch public, it seems to be a move in the right direction for the city of Rotterdam.

View our interactive floor plan of Black Pearl

The flat for Urbannerdam’s program manager Martijn Kok is at the top of one of the first blocks that became part of the scheme a few years ago in the Spangen area of Rotterdam. Kok worked with developer development and design duo Luc van Beers and Steve D’Aboy of 13 Speciaal for the interiors of his flat and the result is a flexible, open plan bright space that combines inside and outside space, as well as an airy and light feel. 

Developer Luc van Beers’ home is in the De Dichterlijke Vrijheid block, which is located in the city’s Spangen area. It was surrounded by pre-renovation by old local authority flats and the area had a less-than-perfect reputation. Since the renovation, prices have been steadily rising in the block, and the area has seen great improvement.

Van Beers and his company, 13 Speciaal, personally followed the works, with the help of architect Dolf Dobbelaar, who did the basic floor plan and layout, such as the unconventional position of the staircase (it is centrally placed rather than next to a wall, as is traditional for this type of residence). All of the further interior design and styling was the work of 13 Speciaal.

‘The biggest challenge was to bring transparency as well as functionality and spatial integration into a proportionally narrow, four-storey home,’ says van Beers. ‘The position of the staircase was key in the design, because it freed up both side walls and helped plan the circulation flow better. The result speaks for itself.’

Back in 2005, Dutch furniture manufacturer Arco invited 12 young designers to create a piece of furniture in response to its archives. The Arco 12 project proved a triumph, spawning the multi-award-winning Slim Table by Bertjan Pot among other pieces now in production, so it's no surprise that Arco should bring the format back for the next instalment. And with Okay Studio's Jorre van Ast now at the creative director helm, it seemed only natural that the London-based design collective should take up the challenge.

Situated in a former piano factory in north east London, Okay Studio is something of a creative hotbed. 'Even though the designers work independently, as a group they really bring out the best in each other,' says van Ast. 'They are all former fellow students, so setting up this workshop with them was a logical step for me.'

Thus he transplanted the designers, including the likes of Peter Marigold, Shay Alkalay and Oscar Narud, to Winterswijk in the Netherlands, where they got together to develop ideas and execute them in Arco's furniture factory. This time around, however, he charged the designers (including himself) to create something completely different to Arco's collection - which largely comprises of tables, chairs and cupboards - bearing in mind the capabilities of the brand's production facilities.

Highlights include Raw-Edges' bread box, featuring a knife that acts as a lever. Once open, the box becomes a board and the knife can be pulled out for use. Then there's Peter Marigold's satisfyingly simple foldable table and his magazine rack on wheels that comes equipped with an arm rest for easy reading. The full fruits of the designers' labour are now on show at Galerie Vivid in Rotterdam, alongside a selection of works from their portfolio.

ADDRESS

Galerie Vivid
Red Apple building
Scheepmakershaven 17
3011VA Rotterdam

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Hella Jongerius' furniture has often divided the design cognoscenti. But, whether you love the 'Frog' table or loathe it, there's no denying the artistry involved in its making.

Sculpted from French walnut wood with blue transparent enamel, the ‘Frog’ table is one of a whole troop of eccentric creations by the Dutch designer on show at Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, including a series of 'Office Pets' and a 'Fox' mirror. Aptly named 'Misfit', the show encompasses Jongerius' entire oeuvre, but without chronology and giving no hierarchy to preparatory studies and finished products.

Jongerius began introducing individuality and imperfections into industrial manufacturing processes in the early 1990s, when she founded her own studio, Jongeriuslab, in Rotterdam, and has long believed that the quality of craftsmanship is not visible in perfect products, but only in the 'misfits' that betray the hand of the maker. Whether a commercial product or a limited edition piece, there's a rebellious streak of fantasy that threads throughout her work, often with witty results.

Take her 'Office pets', a series of fabric characters - including a dragonfly, bird and a beetle - fashioned atop what looks like the swivelling base of an office chair. Created for Vitra and later Galerie Kreo, these pieces connect the rational corporate world with the narrative world of fairy tales to extraordinary effect.

And, with the infamous Frog table, the decorative amphibian functions as an intermediary between user and product - a guest at the table who can't be ignored. It's a brilliantly confrontational way of presenting the power of decoration in design.

Also on show at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is Jongerius' new series of vases for Royal Tichelaar Makkum. Each vase is used by Jongerius as a canvas, on which to experiment with colour, using a mix of classic mineral glaze recipes and modern chemical ones. Colour is another vital element to her oeuvre, around which the exhibition is organised.

Most of the works in the exhibition are displayed on the wall, which deliberately strips them of their normal functional context. In the museum, the visitor is cast as an observer rather than a user, which places the focus on the hidden meaning behind each design.

ADDRESS

Museumpark 18
3015 CX Rotterdam
The Netherlands

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Object Rotterdam, now in its second year, is a show dedicated to 'autonomous design'. This is the term the organisers have coined to describe those limited edition objects and unique functional objects that have become known as 'Design Art'.

The most sensible label for the new - and until now, somewhat blurry - field of creativity that we’ve come across, the term sets the tone for the refreshing coherence and sensibility of Object Rotterdam.

Similar to both Design Miami and Pavilion of Art & Design London, Rotterdam is billed as a supplementary event to a more established art fair – in this case
Art Rotterdam.

However, while it may be similar in feel and size to both Miami and London (only 20 galleries are exhibited), Object Rotterdam is different in that the work on show is entirely contemporary.  

Another reason for the coherence, perhaps, is that the majority of exhibitors hail from The Netherlands. Considering the current appeal of Dutch design - with the Design Academy Eindhoven churning out graduates to join the likes of Maarten Baas, Kiki van Eijk, Makkink & Bey and Scholten & Baijings – the show proved that while the physical landscape might be flat in this part of the world, the creative fields are anything but. 

One star commission – created expressly for Object Rotterdam is Total Table Design - a commission by the Audax Textile Museum Tilburg. Travelling to Milan in April, Total Table have produced a series of designs fit for an entire table - from the tablecloths down to the teaspoons. Designers Kiki van Eijk and Scholten & Baijings have each developed entirely new ranges for cutlery (Royal VKB), crockery, table linen (the Textile Museum) and glassware (Royal Leerdam Crystal).  

Van Eijk’s setting is based around the concept of slow food, featuring warm earthy tones and oversized imagery. Scholten & Baijings, by contrast, produced a concept which played on materials. ‘Paper Table’, for instance, sees folded cardboard models for the crockery realised in light grey, unglazed porcelain. 

The show also offered the chance to catch the first view of the latest instalment of Maarten Baas’s Real Time project. A film, created with Zuiderzeemuseum, featuring four yellow coated beachgoers building a working clock from sand, as the tide ebbs and flows in the background. 

Where Design Miami and Design Art London both rely heavily on 20th century investment pieces to pad out the newer work and guarantee sales, Object Rotterdam instead has a clear emphasis on contemporary jewellery.

Far from the finely crafted, fragile items you might see at Collect, these adornments would be just as at home on our walls as around our necks, and were a perfect complement to interiors items found elsewhere in the show. Galleries of particular note were Galerie Louise Smit; Galerie Ra; and the exceptional new Ted Noten designs at Galerie Rob Koudijs.

Two further designers of note include Rabih Hage, who exhibited his own designs with his eponymous gallery; and Marly Gommans, whose covetable furniture and fashion mix was available at Galerie Judy Straten.

Both mixed up their disciplines in a refreshing way: Rabih – a gallerist/interior designer/hotelier/entrepreneur - showed a number of pieces he had adapted to suit his latest 'Rough Luxe' philosophy – involving in one instance stripping ancient lacquer from some old Chinese chairs
by sandblasting them and adding flat topped nails to the seat to produce a distressed aesthetic.

Marly, a recent graduate, displayed beautiful handmade dresses in felt and leather, which are sold alongside her furniture, ‘dressed’ in the same fabrics in the gallery. 

'Paper Table', part of the 'Total Table Design' project, by Scholten & Baijings.

ADDRESS

Object Rotterdam
Las Palmas, LP II
Wilheminakade 326
3072 AP
Rotterdam

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'We genuinely think that the future of cities will very soon become more important than countries,' declared Biennale Director George Brugmans as he introduced the 2009 event.

The 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) launched its main exhibitions last week, introducing the curators and unveiling the participants’ extensive research on a theme as wide and all-encompassing as it is important; the contemporary city.

See our highlights from the Biennale

Entitled Open City: Designing Coexistence, this year’s biennale is set to investigate both the present and future of the urban environment as we know it, as well as comment on its myriad effects in urban planning and architecture.

Wallpaper* Future 30

‘Naturally, we couldn’t miss such an architectural gathering. Our own Future 30 exhibition, presenting the 30 models of all the houses created for the 2009 Architects Directory, also opened with the official biennale celebrations. With models made at the DMC Bartlett, housed in the Chabot Museum just across the street from the NAI and appropriately launched with a lovely cocktail party.

See more images from the Wallpaper* future 30 show

Watch the film of our making of the Wallpaper* Future 30 exhibition

The 4th IABR

Building up from Mobility (2003), via Flood (2005) and through to Power (2007), the IABR has, since its birth six years ago, elaborated on some of the most important current urban design issues, always working with the concepts and realities concerning the contemporary city. This year’s Biennale seems to be incorporating most of its previous concerns, adding even more questions and themes to the debate and trying to identify what creates the future’s ideal ‘open’ city, a state of inclusion, diversity and coexistence.

Physically divided into six themes touching on different aspects of a city: De Maakbare Samenleing (a standard Dutch expression from the 1960s for the ‘make-able’ society), Squat, Refuge, Collective of Eastern Europe, Reciprocity and Community; the Biennale’s main exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) spans all the continents and a variety of urban situations.

'We are very much a research biennale,' continues Brugmans, 'we pay a lot of attention to research and there is a big part behind the scenes which you cannot see.' His claim quickly became evident as we took in the dense and analytical exhibition of drawings, sketches, photos and films at the NAI. Featuring teams of architects and students from around the world, the scope and scale of the brief means the handsome catalogue (available from SUN Publishers at the NAI bookshop on site) is an essential purchase.

Adding to the extensive research, the plethora of events taking place in and around the main exhibition for the next three and a half months; like the Parallel Cases students projects show at the RDM Campus curated by Ralf Pasel and featuring work by 45 Universities around the globe; a two-week masterclass for Dutch and international students; and a series of collaborations and archive projects with Dutch broadcasting company VPRO; and you’ll get a very well informed, multi-faceted and fully grown yet thoroughly enjoyable Biennale event, which is certainly worth visiting.

See our highlights from the Biennale

A true representation of early 20th century innovation and an expression of the modernist hope for the future, the Chabot Museum seemed the perfect environment to showcase our 30 bespoke residential designs for the 4th Rotterdam International Architecture Biennale; a thought-provoking strategic juxtaposition of contemporary innovation by our Future Thirty and 2009 Architects Directory entrants, set against an icon of timeless innovation from the past century.

Stemming from the region’s modernist architectural tradition and inspired by the work of the Van Nelle factory (w*111) and Sonneveld House architects Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, the Chabot Museum was originally designed by Gerrit Willem Baas and Leonard Stokla in 1938 as a private residence.

See more of the Chabot Museum

Baas, a former employee at Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, had worked on the nearby Bouve and Sonneveld Villas, while also working on his own independent projects. The villa, housing the Chabot today, was commissioned by owner Mr Kraaijeveld within a cluster of modernist villas in central Rotterdam, now advantageously located between the NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) the Boijmans Museum and the park leading to the Koolhaas-designed Kunsthall.

In 1976 a top floor extension was added by architect E. Groosman and now the house consists of two airy open plan levels and a lower ground floor, all brightly lit through large modernist-style zone windows. Rotterdam architects De Weger worked in the building’s conversion from office space, as it was used for the last few years before the Chabot’s inauguration, to a gallery in 1993, resulting to the current clean, light and airy display areas, café and a projection room.

Since the early nineties, the stark-white modernist villa houses the Chabot Museum, a small but perfectly formed gallery for the work of leading Dutch expressionist painter and sculptor Henk Chabot (1894-1949), as well as temporary shows. The current exhibition, launching the Villa Park in The City publication by NAI Publishers, which presents the Chabot and its environs, is the ideal companion for an introduction to the Dutch International Style.

From the 24th September 2009 and through to the end of the IABR, the Chabot will also house Wallpaper’s Future Thirty exhibition, showing a selection of models, photography and drawings, spread across the whole building and cleverly incorporated within the permanent collection. Right across the street from the main hub for the IABR, the NAI, and showcasing new and old architectural design, the Chabot and Wallpaper’s Future Thirty are a must-see stop for the architecture-conscious Biennale visitor for more reasons than one.

Our annual Architects Directory took a different turn this year. After carefully selecting the top 30 emerging practises from around the world, we asked them each to create a concept house. Tying in with the August issue (W*125) when we introduced the 30 to you and photographed the models in Chipperfield’s renovated Neues Museum in Berlin, we showed the portfolios of each practise in our online Architects Directory too.

Watch the video

Now we’re taking to the road, models in hand, to The 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, to present our edit in an exhibition – ‘Wallpaper* future 30’. Exhibiting the concept houses in the Chabot Museum, Rotterdam’s modernist masterpiece, was our goal – but first we needed to make the models.

DMC London at the Bartlett School of Architecture is where it all took place and we travelled down, camera in hand, to see it all take shape…

Come back soon for news of the exhibition itself and our round up of the biennale.

ADDRESS

Future Thirty
Chabot Museum
Museumpark 11
3015 CB Rotterdam

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