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MVRDV's vibrant new Rotterdam Rooftop Walk is officially open. See the first photos here.

2022-05-27T13:13:00-04:00

MVRDV’s latest public installation is underway as Rotterdam Rooftop Walk officially commenced on Thursday, Ascension Day, in the nation’s second-largest city.

Image © Ossip van Duivenbode/MVRDV

The installation is conceived of as the studio’s decades-long experimentation with urban rooftop space and commemorating the start of Rotterdam Architecture Month, the 600-meter-long (1,968 feet) bright orange walkway made its debut for the press ahead of a public unveiling of the adjacent viewing platform called The Podium scheduled for June 1st.

Image courtesy MVRDV

Located on the pergola of the Het Nieuwe Instituut space designed by Jo Coenen in the city’s Museumpark district, the installation is first accessed via a set of 143 bright pink stairs and serves as a showcase for the coterie of creative professionals displaying the capacity for such spaces to be used for greenery, water storage, food production, and energy generation.

Image © Ossip van Dui...

A video tour of MVRDV's "The Stairs"

2016-05-26T17:12:00-04:00

It's not exactly a staircase to heaven (more of a "symbolic arising of the city after World War II"), but the intimate rooftop views provided by MVRDV's "The Stairs" of Rotterdam are spectacular. Plus, the gleeful discussion of temporariness by architectural video duo #donotsettle's Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost is worth a watch alone, along with a cameo by MVRDV co-founding director Winy Maas:

MVRDV is building a giant staircase to honor Rotterdam's post-WWII reconstruction

2016-04-08T14:05:00-04:00

As one of the first major structures built during Rotterdam's post-World War II reconstruction efforts, the centrally located Groot Handelsgebouw is a marker of the city's vision for urban development through the end of the 20th century, functioning both as an office complex and monument. Adjacent to the Stationsplein, the square in front of Rotterdam's Central Station where thousands of commuters pass through daily, the Groot Handelsgebouw area is a major hub and vantage point from which to survey the city.

MVRDV's The Stairs, a public staircase installation accessible for one month early this summer, honors all of these elements – providing a public space from which to view the city's development, linger in the square, enjoy the historic Groot Handelsgebouw's rooftop, and refer (through its scaffold-inspired design) to the ongoing construction efforts of post-WWII Rotterdam, the 75-year mark of which is being celebrated this year with the concurrent "Rotterdam celebrates the city!"...