ROTTERDAM! WHO KNEW?!

Bigness is no longer part of any urban tissue. (...) Its subtext is fuck context.

Rem Koolhaas, architect

 

What a cool city!  Is it any wonder that its most famous architect is named Rem Koolhaas? 

We’d never been to Rotterdam before, except as a drive-through on the way from Amsterdam to Den Haag (the Hague).  We decided the time was right last week for an unplanned visit:  The apartment above us is being renovated, and we were warned that the week-long floor sanding might get very loud.  So we packed up the cats and spontaneously set out on a road trip to Rotterdam last Tuesday, planning to spend two days there and one in Aachen, the medieval city on the German-Netherlands border that Charlemagne put on the map.  Rotterdam turned out to be an architectural gem, a creative mixture of old and new--a home run, as our friend N would say.

Rotterdam (population 633,471) is Europe’s largest port and Holland’s second largest city.  A little over 50% of the population are of non-Dutch origins or have at least one parent born outside the country.  Muslims constitute 13% of the population and the mayor is of Moroccan descent.  This is the changing face of Europe.

Rotterdam used to be a pretty gritty city.  Not anymore.  Like Berlin, it’s gentrifying rapidly, rents are going up fast, and there are construction cranes and excavation pits everywhere.  The Second World War had a lot to do with Rotterdam’s skyline and the continuing construction boom, as the city center was almost completely destroyed by the German Luftwafe on May 14, 1940.  Per Wiki:

In total, 1,150 50-kilogram and 158 250-kilogram bombs were dropped, mainly in the residential areas of Kralingen and the medieval city center.  Most of these hit and ignited buildings, resulting in uncontrollable fires that worsened the following days when the wind grew fiercer and the fires merged into a firestorm. Due to the extent of damage from the bombardment and resulting fire, an almost immediate decision was taken to demolish the entire city center with the exception of the Laurens Church, the trade center, the post office, and the town hall.  Despite the disaster, the city’s destruction was often regarded as the perfect opportunity to redress many of the problems of industrial pre-war Rotterdam, such as crowded, impoverished neighborhoods, and to introduce broad-scale, modernizing changes in the urban fabric which had previously been too radical in [a] built-up city.  There seemed to be no thought of nostalgically rebuilding the old city, as it would be at the expense of a more modern future.

 

In other words, this is the place to be if you want to see innovative modern architecture and skyscrapers in Europe.  It’s a wild scene.  Straight lines?  Who needs ‘em!  Let’s swoop and curve stairways and turn residential cubes on their sides.   

Let’s make a suspension bridge with a single anchorage.  Let’s pull the façade off this building and then appear to keep it from falling off by holding it in place with a giant spike.  What if Rem Koolhaas offsets the upper floors of his high rise towers so they look as if they might topple over?  No problem!

 

And what if we built a huge tunnel above ground, filled it with a giant food court, covered it with apartments, called it the Markthal, and made the whole thing look like a giant Conestoga wagon?  Sure!  Why not! 

The entire downtown looks like the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  

But if it looks surreal, make no mistake:  Rotterdam is very much for real.  It’s young, hip, vibrant, multi-culti, and productive.  Seventy percent of city center residents are singles between 20 and 40, and there is a lively café, bar, and restaurant scene.   This floating cocktail bar was moored next to a pontoon bridge near our hotel.  Put it on the list for next time!

Rotterdam is home to Erasmus University; the Willem de Kooning Academy; the old Holland-American Lines building and the S.S. Rotterdam, both of which are now hotels.   

There are plenty of museums, too; we visited just two of them--the Kunsthal and the waterfront installation of the Maritime Museum Rotterdam.   

There’s even a tax museum, which isn’t surprising when you consider that this is a port city where accountants, insurers, commercial and maritime lawyers, banks, customs houses, and huge container shipping and cruise ship companies come together in the service of trade.  

Rotterdam feels familiar but also a little bit exotic, stimulating but relaxed, ethnically diverse but not foreign, affluent but not arrogant, irreverent but not anarchic—very much like Berlin, except with legalized marijuana and hash.  Their sale is strictly controlled and monitored for compliance with Dutch law.  At the purchase point above, prospective patrons pass through a turnstile, present a passport, and only then are allowed to buy.  Tidy.  Organized.  Behaved.

But we didn’t go to Rotterdam only for the “coffee house” culture.  We went for the art.  The Kunsthal was showing over 70 large-format prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), considered the greatest print artist of his time, best known for his “Vedute di Roma” (Views of Rome), an extensive series of etchings of Roman ruins and monuments.  (We bought four reproductions in Rome that hang in our hallway.) 

Piranesi, like Koolhaas, was an architect.  In addition to the Vedute, he also created a series of imaginary prisons, the “Carceri d’Invenzione” (Prisons of Invention).  These are prisons of the mind, fantasy dungeons that contain internal contradictions, not just spatially, but also metaphorically.  Enclosed within the prison walls are seemingly infinite spaces, physically impossible spaces, which suggest that prisons themselves are imagined.  The body can be restrained, but the mind cannot be contained.  

And neither could the American Women’s Soccer Team!  We watched the U.S. team advance to the finals against England at Panenka, which bills itself as a “classy sports bar” with a Jumbo Tron screen.  Great food, great atmosphere, great game, and located on Eendrachtsstraat in Coolsingel (which should be spelled Koolsingel), not far from controversial American artist Paul McCarthy’s “Butt Plug Santa,” pictured above.  That probably warrants some explanation, so here’s the link: https://www.citizenm.com/news/europe/rotterdam/the-rotterdam-butt-plug-gnome-explained   

 

We returned to Panenka for the Netherlands vs. Sweden match, in the spirit of why reinvent the wheel, but it was already packed.  So we opted instead for St. Arteminius, an old stone Dutch Reformed church repurposed as a community center.  

Based on the poster (above) affixed to its brick walls, "F no!", I'm not sure how reformed the church was, but whoever made it was definitely channeling Koolhaas.

St. Arteminius was recommended to us as a venue by a graphic designer who sold us a poster of Palermo and reminisced about the old days when Rotterdam was still grimy and a little dicey.  He couldn’t have been much over 40, so count that as more evidence of the fast-paced changes underway in this under-touristed European city.  We’ll definitely have to go back to that "F You!" town and find that naughty Santa!

Keep it real!

Marilyn