The population of almost 600,000 (more than 1 million live in adjacent municipalities) makes Rotterdam second in size only to Amsterdam (c.728,000), and comparisons are instructive no less than inevitable. Both were chartered in the early 1300s on sites that began as a dam on a river (the Rotte and the Amstel, respectively), but thereafter their fortunes diverged. Amsterdam rose to power in the Golden Age of the 17th century; Rotterdam, based more exclusively on shipping-related activities, began its economic challenge only after 1872, when the opening of the New Waterway (Nieuwe Waterweg), which connected the port city directly with the North Sea, set it on the path to eventual maritime dominance. Urbanistically Rotterdam followed at a somewhat later date a trajectory similar to Amsterdam’s: the late 19th century brought severe overcrowding in the inner city, unplanned speculative growth on the outskirts, and the gradual adoption of municipal codes and extension plans to counter these problems. Although both cities are water-girt, Rotterdam’s aqueous bodies are larger and more intrusive; instead of picturesque canals, it offers major rivers and harbors spanned by imposing bridges very different in size from those of Amsterdam. Although Amsterdam’s new construction is mainly outside the inner city, Rotterdam’s heart is one huge construction site constantly in transition. That makes it dynamic if a bit unsettling, oriented to the future with little fidelity to the past. Rotterdam has also been more hospitable to foreign firms: Marcel Breuer (De Bijenkorf Department Store, 1955–57, with Dutchman A. Elzas), and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (the three Europoint 24-story towers, 1971–75) have worked there, and in the 1990s it has been the first to welcome such international figures as Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, and Helmut Jahn.

Architecturally the contrast was noted already in 1923, in the oft-quoted letter by Erich Mendelsohn describing Rotterdam as analytic in danger from the deadly chill in its veins and Amsterdam as visionary, threatened by the fire of its own dynamism. The claim may be somewhat exaggerated, but its basic premise about the distinct characters of each city touches on a truth that has obtained throughout much of the century. Rotterdam was the stronghold of Dutch functionalism, the Nieuwe Bouwen, which exalted usefulness over aesthetics. Until recently, its major monuments were almost exclusively for practical ends—housing, commercial, and industrial structures rather than cultural buildings—and the stunning elegance that several attained was a byproduct of efficiency and economy; speed and size took precedence over beauty.

During the fin-de-siècle, Rotterdam was overshadowed artistically by The Hague, its near neighbor and the seat of government, and followed it in favoring the Franco-Belgian variant of the Art Nouveau, unlike Amsterdam, where the more sober, indigenous, and enduring version of Nieuwe Kunst prevailed. The major work during this period is the Witte Huis of 1897–98 (one of the few buildings in the center to have survived the firebombing), the first Dutch, indeed European, skyscraper. Designed by W.Molenbroek, the mansard-roofed, 138-foot-high, 11-story office building with load-bearing walls of stone and white brick was prophetic of Rotterdam’s future as the dominant skyscraper city of the Netherlands. Henry Hobson Ricardson’s work (one of its stylistic influences) was familiar in Holland through the teachings of H.P.Berlage, who, regrettably, found few opportunities in Rotterdam. A workers cooperative (1906–07) and an insurance company (1911; destroyed) were his only executed works; his grand redesigns of the Hofplein square (1921 and 1926), commissioned by the municipality, were rejected. The most conspicuous public building of the first two decades was the neo-Northern Renaissance Town Hall by Henri Evers (1855–1929), professor at Rotterdam’s Academy of Fine Arts and Technical Sciences from 1887–1902. Subject of an invited competition of 1912, the choice of Evers’s ecclectic design, an anachronism before it was completed in 1920, indicated the city’s conservatism, for it might have chosen the much more original entry by Willem Kromhout (1864–1940).

Kromhout, whose work was akin to Berlage’s but more playful and exotic, left a distinguished career in Amsterdam as architectural leader and teacher to move in 1910 to Rotterdam to teach at the academy and reestablish his practice. If earlier he had inspired the Amsterdam School, now among his students were future leaders of the Nieuwe Bouwen such as J.J.P.Oud, Cor van Eesteren, and Leendert van der Vlugt. Kromhout’s own free style retained allusions to architecture from the early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval periods laced with Arabic and Art Nouveau motifs, the whole transformed by a unique imagery that expressed the individual program.

In 1920 Kromhout, who had been president of the Amsterdam club, Architectura et Amicitia, was instrumental in founding, with Michiel Brinkman (1873–1925), a new association, De Opbouw, dedicated to architectural debate. It would attract various factions, including representatives of De Stijl, theosophists (the universalist philosophy popular with many Dutch cultural leaders), and dedicated functionalists, who brought in avant-garde architects from Germany and the Soviet Union and rejected the aesthetic priorities of other members, in part as a response to the urgent task facing architects and city officials—creating inexpensive housing. In 1916 Rotterdam established a Municipal Housing Service, which embarked on constructing extensive new residential quarters outside the center. Among the most acclaimed are the blocks (1919–21) by Brinkman on Justus van Effenstraat in Spangen, a new worker’s neighborhood, which provide housing for 270 families and community facilities—a bathhouse, a laundry, and a children’s play space—in the generously sized interior courtyards. The first two stories are composed of flats; those at ground level have modest private gardens. Portals provide access to the interior terrain where the entries to most of the dwellings are located. Comprising the top two stories are maisonettes, the doors of which open onto a continuous gallery wide enough to permit delivery vans and provide exercise space for children.

Spangen also is home to the first municipal housing by Oud, city architect from 1918– 1933; I & V (1918–20), and VIII & IX (1919–20). These necessarily sober brick perimeter blocks are enlivened by abstract sculptural effects at the corners and over entryways and windows, which reveal, however tenuously, the impact of De Stijl, to which Oud briefly belonged but felt obliged to leave when he took the municipal job, believing that social projects precluded its formal tactics. More obviously indebted to that movement was the red, yellow, and blue temporary superintendent’s office of 1923 (recently reconstructed) belonging to the Witte Dorp (white village) in Oud-Mathenesse, another worker’s quarter. The modest one-and-a-half story row houses, intended as semipermanent, remained in use until the 1990s. Oud’s most mature housing project in Rotterdam, Kiefhoek (1925–29), is a canonical example of the International Style, with its continuous strip windows and taut, whitestuccoed surfaces.

One of the most justly celebrated examples of the Nieuwe Bouwen is the Van Nelle Factory and Administration Building, by Johannes Andreas Brinkman (1902–1949) and L.C. van der Vlugt (1894–1936) assisted by Mart Stam. The architects exploited all the possibilities of transparency and dynamic movement in this interconnected complex in which each of the varied functions is signaled by the contrasts of curved with rectilinear volumes, and rendered stucco planes with large sheets of glass. The structure, which includes novel mushroom-shaped columns, and the skin are skillfully distinguished in the prescribed manner of the International Style.

Another functionalist active chiefly in Rotterdam is Willem van Tijen (1894–1974), who shares responsibility—and fame—for two groundbreaking blocks of flats: Bergpolder (1932–34) and Plaslaan (1937–38), the former in association with Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, the latter with H.A.Maaskant (1907–77), who became his partner in 1937. Both were erected at the behest of the company NV Volkswoningbouw Rotterdam, established on the initiative of the municipal planner, A.Plate, to experiment with new construction techniques. Each stands discretely in a parklike setting, reflecting the tenets of Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), which was very influential in Dutch planning circles and was headed from 1930 to 1947 by Van Eesteren. Bergpolder, the first high-rise housing slab in the Netherlands, has balconies facing west and, on the eastern side, a gallery at each of its nine levels. The steel skeleton was enclosed with numerous prefabricated elements, still a rarity in the Netherlands at the time. The ten-story Plaslaan has a concrete frame and is more luxurious, with larger flats for the middle class. Orientation is reversed for views; the galleries are on the west. It has a roof terrace and at ground floor a laundry space, the concierge’s dwelling, a few guest rooms, a shop, and storage space. Represented also in Rotterdam is the most conservative movement in the Netherlands, the Delft School, comprised mainly of Roman Catholics and nationalists who believed in building according to the timeless Dutch tradition of loadbearing brick. The garden village Vreewijk, by Marinus Granpré Molière (1883–1972), with its pitched-roofed low- rise row houses is a significant example. So is the Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen of 1928–35, by A. van der Steur (1893–1953), city architect from 1931–39, who adapted the round arches and brick-and-stone vernacular worshipped by this school to the rare institutional building found in Rotterdam in this period. Yet a third way appeared in the singular architecture of Rotterdam native (and from 1915 to 1959 designer in various capacities for the National Dutch Railways), Sybold van Ravesteyn (1889–1983), who in the 1930s abandoned the functionalist route to introduce baroque themes and moderne decoration, as demonstrated in his various stations in Rotterdam (Beurs, Delftse Poort, and Feyenoord, 1934–37) and elsewhere and in the delightful Blijdorp Zoo (1937–41). In 1957, after many alterations from his first proposals of 1941, Van Rayestevn’s Central Station for Rotterdam was completed.

On 14 May 1940, to force the Netherlands to capitulate, Nazi planes made a terrifying example of Rotterdam’s inner city. Reconstruction after 1945 was as pedestrian as it was expedient, in part because of the attempt by municipal and national planners to negotiate a compromise between modern functionalists and the Delft School. One thoroughly functionalist project to receive international approbation was De Lijnbaan (1949–53), arguably the first car-free shopping precinct in the modern world. What made it particularly successful was its mixture of boutiques, offices, and housing, each in its own container (i.e., functions were combined not in a single building but in a single urban district). The two-story rows of shops are accessed on the front from pedestrian streets, with deliveries made in the rear via service streets that also serve the blocks of flats and offices behind. The concrete frame that structures the shops allows internal flexibility according to the needs of each retailer. Kiosks, plantings, and handsome paving articulating the module that governs the proportions are palliatives to the rather bland architecture. The apartments are by H.Maaskant and others, the shopping center by the firm of Van den Broek (J.H.; 1898–1978) and J.B.Bakema (1914–1981), which garnered innumerable commissions, and not just in Rotterdam, in the sixties and seventies.

Rotterdam has continued to expand its boundaries to create huge housing districts on the periphery. In 1974 the city again embarked on an aggressive policy of renewal, which as well as restoration of existing areas included new construction like the 549-unit superblock by Carel Weeber (b.1937), De Peperklip (1978–82), named for its unusual footprint. Its multicolored, tile-faced, prefabricated concrete panels acknowledge the Dutch fondness for polychromy, and its mix of apartment types is heir to the spatial ingenuity frequently encountered in this densely populated land. Exciting new developments are occurring as well on the Southern Tip, which besides housing includes commercial and government buildings such as Cees Dam’s Central Tax Bureau and Wilhelmina Tower (1997–99), their strong cubic, curving and prow-shaped volumes boldly contrasting with each other.

A healthy shift began in the later ‘80s when institutional structures took their place beside the more practical building types. In the Rotterdam Schowburg (theater; 1982–88), Wim Quist (b. 1930) was asked by the municipality to provide for a complex program including opera, ballet, and different kinds of theatrical performances; it is a serious and sober building with an intricately sectioned interior that respects the functionalist tradition. More striking and lucid are the Deconstructivist Kunsthal (1988–92) by Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, and the Erasmus Bridge (1990– 96) by UN Studio, headed by Ben van Berkel (b. 1957). Affectionately dubbed the baby- blue Monster, the 139-meter concrete and metal sky-colored bridge that spans 800 meters over the Maas challenges the skyscrapers in height and functions simultaneously as a thoroughfare for cars, cycles, pedestrians, and trams and as urban stage, lighted at night to reveal the dematerialized reflection of its daytime self.

Rotterdam’s architectural position has been ratified by the fact that it now is the home of two prime institutions, both of which have moved from Amsterdam: first the Netherlands Architectural Institute (NAi), which in 1995 was installed in its remarkable polychrome and polytextured intertwined series of buildings by Jo Coenen (b. 1949), and the Berlage Institute, an internationally recognized educational facility established in 1990, that in 2000 relocated to the former bank building at Botersloot 25 (1951) by Oud. Further, Rotterdam takes pride in the fact that it resembles a giant construction site that is never fixed in place. It has embraced with unparalleled enthusiasm the new pluralism manifest during the last decade of the 20th century and, as European Design City of 2001, is determined to retain its uniqueness in the new millennium.

HELEN SEARING 

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

OUD, J.J.P.

1925-1929, Kiefhoek, Rotterdam, Netherlands

1929, "De Bijenkorf", Rotterdam, Netherlands

1954-1961, Utrecht Life Insurance Company Office, Rotterdam, Netherlands

1987-1992, Kunsthal, Rotterdam, NETHERLANDS

1993, Marine Simulator Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

1997-2000, KPN TELECOM OFFICE TOWER, ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

AMSTERDAM; AMSTERDAM SCHOOL; ART NOUVEAU; BERLAGE, HENDRIK PETRUS; BREUER, MARCEL; DE STIJL; DUIKER, JOHANNES; FOSTER, NORMAN; INTERNATIONAL STYLE; JAHN, HELMUT; MENDELSOHN, ERICH; NETHERLANDS; PIANO, RENZO; SKIDMORE, OWINGS AND MERRILL; TEAM X;

FUTHER READING

Unlike Amsterdam, which has an extensive reading list in English, Rotterdam thus far has been examined chiefly in Dutch. Particularly useful for the English-speaking reader for the period when Rotterdam first gained attention as an architectural leader is Rotterdam 1920–1960, a catalog published on the occasion of five exhibitions on the Nieuwe Bouwen. Although it covers far more territory than Rotterdam alone, Rem Koolhaas’s runaway favorite, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, casts a fascinating and provocative light on the city and should be read by all who wish to fathom Rotterdam’s character as manmade artifact. Although a general book on contemporary architecture and theory, 10×10 includes many projects executed in Rotterdam. For further references, see bibliography under the Netherlands.

Barbieri, Umberto (editor), De Kop van Zuid, Rotterdam: Rotterdamse Kunststichting Uitgeverij, 1982

Beerne, Wim, Rob Dettingmeijer, Frank Kauffmann, Ton Idsinga, and Jeroen Schilt, Rotterdam: 1920–1960, Delft: Delft University Press, 1982. Text in English and Dutch

Brinkman, J. A., J. H. van den Broek, W. van Tijen, and H. Maaskant, Woonmogelijkheden in het nieuwe Rotterdam, Rotterdam: W. L. and J. Brusse, 1941

Constantinopolous, Vivian, and Iona Baird (editors), 10 × 10, London: Phaidon, 2000

Grinberg, Donald, Housing in the Netherlands, 1900–1940, Rotterdam: Nijgh-Wolters-Noordhoff Universitaire, 1977

Ibelings, Hans (editor), Van den Broek en Bakema 1948–1988, architectuur en stedenbouw, Rotterdam: Netherlands Architectural Institute, 2000

Jacobs, Brian, Strategy and Partnership in Cities and Regions: Economic Development and Urban Regeneration in Pittsburgh, Birmingham and Rotterdam, London: Macmillan Press and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000

Jonge, Alle de (editor), Alexanderpolder: New Urban Frontiers, Bussum: Thoth, 1993

Koolhaas, Rem, with Bruce Mau and Jennifer Sigler, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1995

Nieuwenhuis, Jan, Mensen Maken een Stad, 1855–1955, Rotterdam: Dienst van Gemeentewerken, 1955

Post.Roterdam, Architecture and City After the Tabula Rasa, Rotterdam: 010 Pulishers, 2001 

Ruiter, Fred de, Marijke Meijs, and Ad Habets (editors), Stadsvernieuwing Rotterdam 1974–1984, 3 vols., Rotterdam: i 10, 1984

Traa, C. van (editor), Rotterdam, der Neubau einer Stadt, Rotterdam: A. Donker, 1957

Wentholt, R., De binnenstadsbeleving in Rotterdam, Rotterdam: A. Donker, 1968

Wonen-TA/BK: Architectuurgids Rotterdam, vol. 53, no. 6, 1980