Diagonally cut tops
The building's shape changes completely with your viewing angle.
Paul van de Velde from Netherlands — CC BY 2.0 · Ralf Roletschek — CC BY 3.0 · GraphyArchy — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Frans Berkelaar — CC BY 2.0
An office skyscraper beside Rotterdam Centraal station, completed in 1991, and for years the tallest building in the Netherlands. The building is two joined towers of different heights, one of them passing a hundred and fifty metres. The facade is entirely glass in a blue-green tint, and the top of each tower is cut on a diagonal — a detail that makes its shape change completely depending on the direction you view it from. Its name is taken from an old city gate that stood at roughly this spot, demolished in the nineteenth century when Rotterdam expanded beyond its walls. What makes it worth looking at is that it explains Rotterdam. The bombing of 1940 erased almost the entire old centre in an hour and a half, and rather than rebuild it as it had been, the city chose to build modern. The result is that Rotterdam is the only Dutch city with a skyline of towers, and it has been doing this enthusiastically for eighty years. It is a private office building, not visited — it is seen from outside.
The building's shape changes completely with your viewing angle.
An old city gate stood here and was demolished in the nineteenth century.
Rotterdam is the one Dutch city that builds towers with enthusiasm.
Beside Rotterdam Centraal station
On 14 May 1940 German aircraft bombed central Rotterdam while surrender negotiations were under way. About a square mile of the old city was destroyed and what remained burned, displacing tens of thousands. The Netherlands surrendered the next day under the threat of further cities being bombed. After the war Rotterdam refused the historical reconstruction other cities chose and built an entirely modern centre — a decision that still divides opinion but gave the city its identity.
Piet Blom's cube houses, the Erasmus Bridge known as the Swan, the arched Markthal, Rem Koolhaas's De Rotterdam building on the harbour, and the new station itself. Distances are short and the city is flat — a bicycle or walking is enough. Give half a day to the architecture route alone.
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