Designs for a visitor center have been unveiled this week as the city of Rotterdam looks to transform public space in Europe’s busiest port.
The new Harbor Experience Center (HEC) is a collaboration between Dutch firms MVRDV and Kossmanndejong and features a series of five exhibition spaces stacked and rotated to offer visitors unique views of the city and port through panoramic windows and an open-air rooftop terrace complete with 266 solar panels.
“The center allows you to discover the port and understand what it means for society, the economy, and the environment,” Richard van der Eijk, the Port of Rotterdam’s Director of Communications & External Affairs, said in a statement.
The design came together as a replacement for FutureLand, the popular tourist destination that opened in 2009 and presently hosts over 100,000 visitors a year.
Connected by an outdoor staircase that wraps around the stacked volumes, the HEC will host the Port Authority’s new permanent exhibition, which is interlaced with a ground-floor café, central atrium, and fourth-floor restaurant in a scheme meant to mirror the efficiency of the port itself.
Much of the net-zero building is made of reused materials, including a donated steel structure and acoustic ceiling comprised of recycled paper pulp. The HEC will also be completely demountable, lacking a concrete foundation and featuring facade panels that can be used again at the end of its functional life cycle.
The HEC also has an on-site windmill and will open in 2024.
4 Comments
1. it's nice, clever 2. they deserve commendation for NOT proposing to build this out of shipping containers
Also it is a visitor center, not the port authority administrative building(s) which the title of the article indicated.
And here’s the runner up, not kidding:
Source
oof.
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