UNStudio’s Post Rotterdam

UNStudio - Post Rotterdam (Copyright UNStudio) (click-2-enlarge)

In Rotterdam there is more than one obsolete post office. The privatization of the post has even added some more in the past years. There is for instance a huge sixties building next to Rotterdam Central Station. It is a relic from the time post was still shipped through the country by train. Currently it is being transformed into offices for ‘creative’ businesses. Rumors go the top-level is being transformed for OMA Rotterdam. It is an office space to envy: it is basically an enormous warehouse with massive open floors and a floor-to-floor height one could only dream of.

This week it was announced that UNStudio will be converting another post office in the center of Rotterdam: a now vacant monumental building from 1923 near the retail heart of the city. Once a place to buy your stamps and stuff, it now will be transformed into a luxury shopping mall with a hotel tower. Or, when no hotel company is interested: luxury apartments. That is a big market, it seems. Rotterdam plans 5.000 of such houses in the coming years.

Ben van Berkel once suggested that his own oeuvre could be divided into periods, similarly to for instance the work of Pablo Picasso. Van Berkel noted that at the end of what he himself called his ‘blue’ period (actually ‘baby blue’). It was a period that overlapped with the folding-period of UNStudio. Now, after a period of mostly colorful buildings shaped like nicely cut multifaceted diamonds, the projects presented in the past couple of months suggest UNStudio has taken yet another turn, now favoring black or white ribbons: ribbons that bend, thin, broaden, twist, etc.

The design for the shopping mall in Rotterdam illustrates this new fashion with ribbons that supple and subtle form webs. It, kind of, looks like an enlarged version of the web-fenestration found in Gothic architecture. It is fashion that is currently widespread through the architecture discipline and that is featured for a while now in magazines like MARK. I can’t think of an example of such an architecture that has already been realized though.

The architecture as presented on the renderings here looks fabulous. I do wonder though why the tower features mostly horizontal lines, instead of vertical ones. Would that look too old-fashioned? I also wonder how an almost fully glazed façade would keep up when build. To avoid the warming of the interior the glass would have to turn black (As far as I know there is no white sun-reflecting glass developed yet). In the end it would means a(nother) black tower would be added to the skyline of Rotterdam.

Then again, in a year the design has probably been changed completely. I am very curious how it turns out!

UNStudio - Post Rotterdam (Copyright UNStudio) (click-2-enlarge)

UNStudio - Post Rotterdam (Copyright UNStudio) (click-2-enlarge)

UNStudio - Post Rotterdam (Copyright UNStudio) (click-2-enlarge)

UNStudio - Post Rotterdam (Copyright UNStudio) (click-2-enlarge)

Related UNStudio: C for yourself, Coin, by United, Mercedes-Benz, by UNStudio, ICE, by UNStudio.