Rotterdam’s urban rethink makes it the city of 2025

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

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