THE MORNING LIST
Born in the second city of the Netherlands, the famous architect, urban planner and thinker Rem Koolhaas continues to practice there within the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), his agency founded in 1975. Builder of the surprising polyhedron of the Seattle library , from From the gigantic portico of Chinese television CCTV, in Beijing, or, more recently, from Anticipations Lafayette, in Paris, he left some testimonies of his art in this port city, largely rebuilt after the war.
Its first major building was the Kunsthal, designed in 1992 to host exhibitions and events. The access ramps cross the parallelepiped arranged along a busy avenue. Inside the building, visitors entering or leaving the building appear to emanate from different dimensions. The Kunsthal follows the slope that leads to the Museumpark, also designed by Rem Koolhaas. It is the place for a walk that will take you to other cultural institutions such as the Nieuwe Instituut (architecture, design and digital), the surprising functionalist villa of the Sonneveld family or the shiny flower pot containing the works of the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum. , currently under construction: Popular with tourists, the Depot was designed by the MVRDV agency run by Winy Maas, a former OMA employee.
“This city is interesting because its center is younger than its outskirts”says Rem Koolhaas. Starting from the 3 kilometer crater left by the German and then Allied bombings, it was necessary to imagine a new metropolis. One of the most prominent architects of this period was Huig Maaskant (1907-1977), highly appreciated by Rem Koolhaas. “Our first offices were located in their Groot Handelsgebouw”a building that is both brutalist and refined, also crossed by a delivery ramp, which has been converted into a public garden. “Maaskant’s spaces are generous and open”like Rotterdam, whose Koolhaas greets the“lack of pretension” and tolerance towards the 170 nationalities that comprise it.
“Building Signature”
Near the town hall, the architect and his partner Reinier de Graaf sewed new elements into the 1950s Timmerhuis in 2015. Dubbed “the cloud,” the translucent addition is made up of square base units that, when grouped together, evoke a 3D Tetris . . Crossing the New Meuse on the Erasmus Bridge we arrive at De Rotterdam, one of the tallest buildings in the country. As an ideogram, it combines three gray towers with broken lines. It is as if we have placed boxes on top of each other in an unstable balance.
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