“Amsterdam has it; Rotterdam doesn’t need it.”
So goes the catchy saying you can find on t-shirts in The Netherlands’ second-largest city and main economic hub. Rotterdam’s good-natured rivalry with Amsterdam goes back centuries; Amsterdam was seen as a beacon of culture, higher learning and posh society, while Rotterdam, which boasts the largest seaport in all of Europe, was proudly working class. As the thinking went, Dutch money is made in Rotterdam and spent in Amsterdam.
Rotterdam was founded in 1270 when a dam was constructed across the- you guessed it- Rotte River. The city is actually situated over an entire river delta (comprised of the Rhine, Maas, Scheldt & Rotte Rivers, among others) that feeds in the North Sea. From the Dutch Golden Age onwards, Rotterdam established itself as the entry point for imported and exported goods in Europe. In fact, today over half of all imports to the continent pass through Rotterdam’s gates.
The city did not fare well during World War II. On May 14, 1940, the Nazi Army bombed the Dutch city for 12 hours straight in the so-called Rotterdam Blitz. 900 people were killed and another 80,000 found themselves homeless. The entire historic center of the city was leveled with only a handful of building still standing by May 15. Near the end of the war, as Allied Forces pushed the Nazis back into Germany, the fleeing occupiers set fire to the port in one last effort to leave nothing behind for the Dutch victors. In the decades that followed, post-war Rotterdam had to be completely rebuilt from the ground up. Radical architectural styles were employed by designers from all over the globe, making Rotterdam a hot destination for modern architecture lovers.
Centraal Station (Central Station)
With an assist from the excellent Dutch high-speed-train system, an excursion to Rotterdam is more than feasible as a day trip from Amsterdam. Approximately 60 trains run everyday between the capital and Rotterdam; it’s a brisk 45 minute commute from one to the other. The ticket should cost no more than 15-20€, making the journey cost effective as well.
All trains will drop you off at Rotterdam’s shimmery Centraal Station, which, as the name would suggest, is centrally located and a short distance from all the main sights. Before the Rotterdam Blitz, there were four train stations spread out across the city. After all four were destroyed in the bombing, city officials decided to consolidate the track networks and have them intersect at Centraal Station. Rotterdam’s metro system also converges under the station, should you be staying in the city for any length of time and have need to travel outside the walkable city center. Built in 1957, Centraal Station had become outmoded to handle the 100,000+ passengers who passed through its doors everyday. In 2007, the station was completely demolished, redesigned and rebuilt, finally reopening in 2014. The clock and letters that hang across the front entrance were carried over from the 1957 building in an attempt to preserve some of the station’s history.
Kunsthal
Perhaps feeling a tad envious of Amsterdam’s claim to the Dutch artistic crown, Rotterdam’s city government designated a cultural zone known as the “Museumpark” within its limits, proving to the world that there’s more to Rotterdam than shipping containers and custom agents. The Museumpark’s shining star, and the main reason I wanted to visit Rotterdam in the first place, is Kunsthal, a massive modern and contemporary art museum that opened in 1992. Kunsthal has no permanent collection, allowing for a wide and varied array of special exhibitions to fill its galleries over seven floors. I’m going to highlight three of the exhibitions I had the pleasure of seeing during my visit.
Favela Painting: Community Art for Social Change
In 2005, Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn (Haas&Hahn) traveled to Brazil to film a documentary about hip-hop in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. While there, they were moved by the optimism and creativity of the people of Vila Cruzeiro, one of the most notoriously violent favelas in the city. Using a design from a local tattoo artist, Haas&Hahn began painting a river with red carp swimming upstream along an embankment of the neighborhood. Locals helped with the painting and it became a source of pride for the inhabitants. Over the next decade, the painting faded and eroded until it no longer matched the vibrancy of the favela. Haas&Hahn returned, but instead of repainting the piece, they created mosaic pieces out of sustainable materials, which members from the community were taught how to affix to the cascading river. Now the artwork is more durable and will hopefully stand the test of time.
Haas&Hahn have transformed many squares across the favela, including the one photographed above in 2011. Residences got to choose which colors their houses were painted, and 25 community members were trained to help Haas&Hahn complete the project. We are products of our surroundings, and it was important for Haas&Hahn to help match the physical dwellings of the slum with the extraordinary spirit of the people living there.
Science Fiction: A Journey Into the Unknown
What is science fiction other than an exploration of the human imagination? Authors, filmmakers, artists and philosophers have allowed their creativity to run wild as they have attempted to make sense of the unknown in our world and beyond. This includes not only the far reaches of the galaxy, but also to unbelievable advancements in technology like flying cars and time travel. This exhibition featured 850 artifacts from science fiction spanning decades and encompassing art from nearly every continent. How did science fiction of the Soviet Union differ from offerings of the genre in Japan, France or the United States? Science fiction is often aimed at children, through animation like “The Jetsons” or comic books and board games. Of course, film and television, from Star Trek to Star Wars, have allowed science fiction to feel just as plausible as reality for millions the world over. (Darth Vader’s helmet and dinosaur eggs from Jurassic Park both found their way into the exhibition.)
A film series of the best in sci-fi world cinema accompanied this exhibition, with different movies being screened in the museum’s auditorium on the weekends. Kunsthal is all about community involvement in the arts and reaching out to people who might not normally visit a modern or contemporary art museum. The pieces were not only relevant and the themes relatable to everyday life, but the exhibitions were just plain fun and made me feel like a kid again.
I loved the piece pictured above, which consisted of a rotating beam of light, emitted with laser focus at moving panels of textured paper. As the laser slowly spun around the room, projected images like shadow puppets were cast through the screens. More abstract than toy robots, this exhibit allows you to walk through a 3D projection of the artist’s imagination, with the viewer making of the light and shadows what he or she will.
Trouble in Paradise
“Trouble in Paradise” is an exhibition of seventy pieces from the private collection of art lover Rattan Chadha. The collection was displayed in three phases: Soul Searching, Delicious Confusion and Forever Young. Chadha’s amassed pieces come from different decades, mediums and a multitude of artists, and yet they coalesce into a united whole, revealing what speaks to and moves Chadha when adding a new work to his collection.
One of the most arresting pieces in the collection was Folkert de Jong’s “Medusa’s First Move: The Council,” which depicts both historical and fictional characters sitting around a table on a raft made of oil drums, dividing up the globe as their spoils of war. De Jong creates his sculptures from polyurethane and styrofoam, staging theatrical tableaux that often mix humor with horror and violence. Figures are often missing limbs and faces; the mise en scene of his work is in turn often inspired by classic paintings and sculptures. In “Medusa’s First Move,” the new world leaders’ celebration of their advancements in global politics and economics are contrasted with the war, misfortune and environmental impact wrought on others to obtain their power. Here Delicious Confusion reigns supreme.
A standout of the Soul Searching phase was Candice Breitz’s “Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), filmed in 2005. Dozens of Dutch youth were filmed in closeup singing and dancing to Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” Although the wall of screens is at first glance humorous, there is a melancholy to the a cappella vocal stylings and isolation of the performances. Although they are signing in unison, they were filmed alone, resonating with Madonna’s lyrics, “I’m tired of dancing here all by myself/tonight I wanna dance with someone else.” The old adage of youth being wasted on the young holds true.
Dutch artist Rafaël Rozendaal, who now lives and works in New York, created “Random Fear (With Mirrors) for the exhibition at Kunsthal. Rozendaal views the internet as a universe of organized chaos and the broken mirrors on the ground reflect a distortion of the reality above. The artist brought large pieces of reflective glass into the gallery space and covered them with a drop cloth before wielding a mallet and shattering them into slivers and shards. The lighted boxes changed colors, creating a kaleidoscope of colors and images in the room. In this Forever Young phase, Rozendaal does not confine himself to any one medium or technique.
Rotterdam Walking Tour
After spending my entire morning in Kunsthal, it was time to grab some lunch and explore the rest of the city. One of the best ways to do this is by simply getting lost amongst the steel and glass towers that house the workers and residents of Rotterdam. Because there are almost no pre-1940s buildings left standing, you shouldn’t expect to find much of an “old town” in The Netherlands’ second city. Rotterdam may be 750 years old, but you wouldn’t know it from the funky structures that appear to have melted in the sun or been crumpled by a strong wind. How does this city with such a storied history feel like it materialized out of the river delta only yesterday?
One of Rotterdam’s most famous public artworks is “Sylvette,” a collaboration between Picasso and the Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjar. Back in the 1950s, Sylvette was one of Picasso’s models, eventually becoming his sole muse for many months. Picasso sketched, drew and painted her in both traditional and cubist stylings. Her most distinguishable characteristic was her tight, high ponytail, which in turn became fashionable amongst young women in Paris at the time. In the 1960s, Picasso wanted to transition his Sylvette sketches into sculptures and his friend and colleague Nesjar had an idea. He would employ his “concrete sgraffito” technique, which involved mixing concrete with small black pebbles. Picasso would then then outline his sketch on the hardened concrete and Nesjar would sandblast over his lines, revealing the black pebbles underneath.
The sculpture was completed and purchased by the Rotterdam city government in 1963, but there was an uproar from the public at the time that officials would invest tax dollars in foreign art rather than first and foremost supporting local Dutch artists. This caused a delay of unveiling the sculpture for seven years; “Sylvette” has grown in popularity over the decades and now sits in a place of prominence in the Museumpark district.
Completed in 2013, this relatively new addition to the Rotterdam skyline by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, has quickly become one of the symbols of the city. Koolhaas, who at one point wanted to become a film director, created De Rotterdam to appear as if it were always in motion as you walk past. The building is 42 stories tall and one of the towers is occupied by the luxury hotel, nhow Rotterdam. The other towers contain residential apartments, office space and retail stores.
In order to reach De Rotterdam, simply walk across Erasmusburg, which connects the North and South Sides of the city. Nicknamed “The Swan” due to the single pylon curved to resemble a swan’s neck, Erasmusburg was completed in 1996 and has since been the site of concerts, fireworks and laser light shows. Pedestrian walkways line both sides of the bridge and the stroll, while windy, will provide you with excellent views of both halves of the city.
Markthal (Market Hall)
I highly recommend stopping at Markthal, which newly opened in 2014. The enormous structure is shaped like an upside down horseshoe, with 228 eco-friendly apartments nestled in the archway. The dwellings look down on a open-air food market, with speciality restaurants serving up cuisines from all over the world. The market was completely packed when I visited and I wanted to eat a little bit of everything in sight. I settled on a Turkish-style pizza and some cupcakes from a Dutch bakery. Below the market are four levels of parking that can hold up to 1200 cars.
The artwork on the interior of the archway, “Horn of Plenty,” was designed by Dutch artists Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam. All of the various images were mapped out digitally, utilizing the same 3D animated techniques employed by Pixar and Dreamworks when those studios create their films. The images were then enlarged, dissected and printed on 4000 aluminum panels that were subsequently hung inside the Markthal.
The market continues to spill out into the square behind the Markthal (a good place to find cheap t-shirts and Rotterdam souvenirs). There’s even a Ferris wheel and giant lawn where you can enjoy your meal outside on a sunny day. The weather was gorgeous during my day trip and both the plaza and green space were full of shoppers and sunbathers.
Kubuswoningen (Cube Houses)
During post-war Rotterdam’s construction boom, local officials feared the downtown area was becoming too businesslike. The government began doling out grants for “playful” architecture that would add character and whimsy to the city. Piet Blom was a recipient of one such grant after submitting blueprints for his Kubuswoningen (Cube Houses) concept. Constructed between 1982-84, the Cube Houses are a set of 39 homes that rest on hexagonal posts at 53.5 degree angles to the ground. The column contains a door, bike storage and a stairway up to the residence. Inside, each cube has three floors, containing a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, a shower, toilet and study. All of the homes have been continuously occupied since 1984, save for one which has been turned into a museum (Kijk Kubus) and a second which was purchased by a hostel and allows you to spend the night in one of the cubes.
The buildings underneath the cubes were meant to act as a miniature city for the residents of the houses above. There is a fitness center, grocery store, a school, clothing boutiques and more. Blom’s “Forest of Tree Houses” is nicknamed “Het Blaak Bos” or the Blaak Forest, referring to the Blaak motorway that runs underneath the bridge upon which the houses were constructed. Blom was heavily influenced by the Ponte Vecchio when creating this neighborhood complex.
Due to the small size of the houses, the museum only allows so many visitors in at a time. You can’t schedule your entrance ahead of time, but it’s totally worth the wait (and cheap 2.50€ admission fee) to climb up and check out the model home. Because of the bizarre angles in the house, occupants must be very creative with the furniture they purchase and how it is arranged in the space. The cubes are meant to be soundproof when all the windows are closed, giving one privacy even though all the units are connected. There’s plenty of sunlight, but the ceilings are low (watch your head, Ben) and the top floor is really nothing more than a mini attic in the apex of the cube. Blom’s houses never caught on for mass production, but they are completely fascinating and capture the Dutch spirit well.
I imagine that one could blissfully spend several days exploring Rotterdam in its own right, but it is easy to experience these highlights in a single day and travel back to Amsterdam in time for a late dinner. While Rotterdam does receive its fair share of visitors, it hardly faces the issues of overtourism that Amsterdam deals with on a daily basis. Most importantly, Rotterdam has bucked its image as nothing more than an industrial seaport by consciously creating an environment of architectural wonders and cutting edge art. Don’t sleep on Rotterdam- it just may surprise you!
