A tour through the center of Rotterdam gives the impression that buildings often do not seem to want to belong to the city. The tradition of the 19th-century European city in which the buildings are in line and make a sharp transition between public (the street) and private (the building) does not seem to stick in the city.
In a reflex, this characteristic is automatically attributed to the caesura of WWII. The center of the city had to be rebuilt brick by brick. Legend has it that this was done in a modernist way, but the fact is that the architecture of reconstruction was built according to principles of the classical city. The urban planning of the 40s and 50s in Rotterdam dictated buildings in line, striking entrances and in many cases a classic vertical order of plinth, corpus and a special feature in the façade or roofline. Generous works of art on the facades made it clear that building was not an individual activity, but represented a value to society. Façade advertising spoke proudly.
In the city centre, the principles of classic urban planning were refreshed in this way and reapplied in a contemporary way. However, with the arrival of the Lijnbaan shopping mall and the filling in of smaller pieces of the new urban fabric in the making, the classic foundations were left again. From that moment on, new buildings show an ambivalent attitude towards the street. Buildings stand in the open and allow indeterminate spaces to arise.
This remarkable tendency, partly attributable to modern conception and partly to coincidence, is not tied to a particular architectural style. To this day, buildings are built with a blurred boundary between built and unbuilt. Of the hundreds of buildings built in the last 50 years, only a handful have been built according to the aforementioned urban principles.
Apparently, a certain informality or disinterest has crept into Rotterdam’s building culture, making it possible that certain buildings are crooked or set back from the street. Other buildings stand on the sidewalk with columns or a revolving door or keep the public at a distance. Sometimes the front door is around the corner or the waste containers are on the street. There seems to be a consistent incongruity that causes buildings and public space to merge into each other and public space loses its definition. The streets of Rotterdam are already relatively wide in themselves, but due to indifferent buildings, they now also lack opportunities for architectural framing. In fact, it happens that buildings appropriate part of the public space of the city or allow it to run away. The loss of clear boundaries between street and building can contribute to the misunderstanding of public space, with which the city also loses part of its public meaning. Rotterdam is doing itself down.
Fragment from Rotterdam Klein&Fijn, 2012
Image: Rotterdam, Hoogstraat 1963
