Just steps away from the iconic Erasmus Bridge, a new office for KAAN Architecten has joins the crowd of notable buildings in the heart of the Dutch city of Rotterdam. The project transformed 1,400 square meters of a site with a storied history. Designed by Henri Timo Zwiers in the mid-fifties, the structure was built on the grounds a former synagogue that was destroyed in the Second World War. Originally the premises of De Nederlandsche Bank, the building’s bright open spaces and rectangular floor plan lend itself well to an architecture office.
KAAN restored the industrial concrete structure, and counterbalanced the rough concrete with dark walnut. “The harmonious interaction between the warm comfort of the wood and the pre-existing concrete structure, envelopes the atmosphere in a graceful yet monumental feeling,” writes KAAN Architecten.
“The notion of sharing of knowledge is at the core of the division of spaces and the interior design of the new office. This rough space has the special gift of an industrial yet monumental aesthetic, a beauty that we decided to exalt through a solid balance between two simple materials wood and concrete,” states Dikkie Scipio, founder of KAAN Architecten.
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1 Comment
Sweet digs! Does this qualify as adaptive reuse or just reuse? Between being a bank and an architecture office, what was it?
Also, "has joins"?
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