NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 14

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The ‘Rotterdam’ version of the history of high-rise in Rotterdam portrays a ‘first wave’ of high-rise
building in the mid 1980s and an emergent second wave of super high-rise. However, if we
take a careful look at the evidence on the ground we arrive at a rather different conclusion, and an
interesting starting point for rethinking the city’s guidance on tall buildings.

Dating Rotterdam’s high-rise

Lijnbaan, Lijnbaanflats and the tall buildings along the Weena.

Frank van der Hoeven, TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture / Illustrations: Frank van der Hoeven

Over the years ‘Rotterdam’ has carefully
cultivated an image as a ‘city of architecture’.
But historic architecture is not Rotterdam’s
strong point. Few buildings were left
standing after the bombing and fire of
May 1940, and most of those were modern
buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. The city
had to rebuild its centre from scratch.
It seized the opportunity this presented to
experiment with architecture and urbanism,
which is why Rotterdam city centre now
contains numerous monuments or icons
from the modern or modernist period,
sometimes referred to as ‘reconstruction
architecture’.
Discussions about the appropriateness of
high-rise buildings did surface from time
to time, but never reached a climax as it did
in cities with a historic centre. Tall buildings
are now generally accepted and most are
concentrated in the city centre. While
‘Rotterdam’ as a whole uses modern and
modernist architecture to promote itself,
tall buildings are an essential ingredient in
the profile of the city centre: the skyline
has become a true icon of the city.
In the last twenty years the city has
produced two guidance notes on tall
buildings. Its latest revision was
accompanied by the book Rotterdam High-
rise City, which, as is stated in the book,
devotes considerable attention to the new
municipal policy on high-rise buildings,
especially their historical context. This
semi-official history portrays a hundred-
year prelude from the late nineteenth
century (with the completion of the Witte
Huis in 1898) to the so-called ‘first wave’
of high-rise building in the mid 1980s.
This suggests that we are now on the verge
of a second wave, which will feature super
high-rise buildings.
If we take a closer look at what happened in
the early years of Rotterdam’s ‘century of
high-rise’ and try to read this episode as a
prelude to the current high-rise
developments, we run into difficulties.
Neither the height nor the location of the
‘tall’ buildings dating from this early period
relate to the new municipal policy on high-
rise. Although the first ‘high-rises’ were
relatively tall for their time, they fall far
short of qualifying as ‘tall’ by current
standards. Take, for instance, the HBU
building (1939), whose modest 40 metres is
dwarfed by numerous buildings almost
twice this height. Even the GEB tower (1931,
64 metres) is too small to qualify under the
current policy on high-rise, which applies
only to buildings of 70 metres or more.
We face similar difficulties when we look at
the location of these buildings. In the four
decades between the construction of the
NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 15
GEB tower and the completion of Hoboken
(1969; 114 metres) almost all tall buildings
were built to the west of the city centre or
in the western part of the centre. It was
only in the 1970s that the current high-rise
area in the middle of the centre began to
emerge.
a clear pattern
Let us take a look at some data to get a
better understanding of what is happening.
In ‘The Wonderful Hague Height’ (Nova
Terra 4(1) April 2004) we introduced the
scatterplot as an instrument for visualising
Tall buildings built between 1930 and 1970.
HBU on the Coolsingel.
the development of high-rise in a city.
Such a scatterplot is a simple graph on
which the date of completion (horizontal
axis) and the building height (vertical axis)
of each tall building is marked with a single
dot. The beauty of Rotterdam’s scatterplot
lies in the clear pattern that emerges. Every
leap forward in the development of tall
buildings is announced by a frontrunner: for
every increase in scale there is one building
that sets the standard for the era to come, a
few bold statements in the development of
the skyline. These are the GEB tower (1931,
64 metres), the Faculty of Medicine of the
Erasmus University, also known as ‘Hoboken’
(1969, 114 metres) and the Delftse Poort
(1991, 151 metres). The Coolsingeltoren
(2006, 187 metres) could be the next in line.
If the high-rise history of Rotterdam goes
in waves, these are the ones. Rotterdam’s
tall buildings are increasing in number and
height, each wave becoming stronger.
Current municipal guidance states that a
tall building is at least 70 metres high. This
makes 1969/1970 a true watershed. First,
Hoboken was completed (1969, 114 metres),
followed a year later by the Faculty of
Economics (1970, 78 metres). In the same
year the Euromast was extended with the
addition of the Space Tower (1970, 185
metres). Tall buildings then sprung up in
various locations throughout the city, in
height ranging from 50 to 100 metres. The
barrier of 70 metres was broken, but although
there seemed no reason for turning back,
the construction of tall buildings came to
an abrupt end in the late 1970s. The city
council had imposed a moratorium on the
construction of office buildings.
‘Rotterdam’ is not eager to acknowledge
the fact that the first generation of ‘true’
tall buildings appeared in the 1970s. When Y
Scatterplot on the
Rotterdam skyline.
NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 16
people speak of a ‘first wave of tall
buildings’ they usually mean a later period,
starting in the mid 1980s. Looking back at
this ‘first generation’, it is easy to see why:
there is little a ‘city of architecture’ can be
proud of. This first decade of ‘true’ tall
buildings did not produce many beautiful
ones. Their architectural quality is mediocre
at best, exemplified by the PTT Telecom
building (1970, 51 metres), Europoint II and
III (1975, 92 metres) or the Hofpoort (1976,
95 metres). Even their contribution to urban
life is doubtful, since they are monofunctional
building schemes without any public
functions at street level.
Hofpoort at Hofplein.
But whatever the quality produced in this
period, it is in fact the first period to
produce a substantial number of buildings
over 70 meters tall. And for the first time a
significant proportion of these tall
buildings appeared within the current high-
rise zones. So, high-rise began properly in
the 1970s. The question is: why did this
development come to a temporary halt?
building freeze
One of the key elements of modernist
planning is dividing the city into different
zones limited to a single or just a few urban
functions. Within this framework, the city
centre is the employment and retail centre.
The outskirts and the suburbs are for living.
In the mid 1970s large parts of Rotterdam’s
city centre had been rebuilt along these
lines, but had become inhospitable. In the
daytime the city was busy, but after office
or shopping hours it was virtually a ghost
town.
Local politicians and the public demand a
livelier centre offering a higher quality of
life. The general feeling was that this could
be accomplished by getting more people to
live in the city centre. The construction of
offices had to be checked to make way for
new housing projects, although a full-scale
conversion from high-rise offices to high-
rise living was not feasible. The large
modernist housing estates in the suburbs
(built in the late 1960s and early 1970s) had
put a negative spin on high-rise living and
it was far from popular at the time. As a
result, the decision to freeze the construction
of offices in favour of housing brought the
construction of tall buildings almost to a
complete standstill. Only two smaller
residential towers were completed in the
years to 1985. Instead, the centre was
littered with various low-rise housing
experiments.
But all things come to an end, even a
moratorium on new office blocks. After
years of rapid economic growth the
economy slowed down in the early 1980s
and went into recession. The port, the pillar
of the Rotterdam economy for the last
century, was increasingly shedding jobs. It
was no longer possible to overlook the high
employment potential of the city centre.
Politicians changed their views on barring
office development and the construction of
office buildings picked up with the
completion of the WTC (1986, 93 metres),
the Maas (1988, 76 metres) and the
Willemswerf (1988, 88 metres). Since 1990
construction of tall buildings in the central
area has been in full swing: Weenatoren
(1990, 106 metres), Weenacenter (1990; 103
Basisplan, mono-functional zoning.
metres), Delftse Poort (1991, 93 and 151 metres)
and the Robeco Tower (1991; 95 metres).
The number of tall buildings built since the
end of the ‘freeze’ was higher than normal,
mainly due to postponed demand. In our
opinion this fact alone does not justify talk
of a new era or ‘the first wave’. We have
already pointed out that the significance of
the 1970s as an earlier wave is generally
overlooked. But perhaps more importantly,
there is little or no evidence of a significant
change taking place during the mid 1980s.
When office building picked up the city did
not stipulate any special conditions on
high-rise development. Neither do we see a
shift in the location of new tall buildings.
NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 17
When we look at the architecture, we find
some (albeit anecdotal) evidence to
support the idea that this period is actually
characterised by continuity instead of
discontinuity. The last office building before
the moratorium, the Coolse Poort (1979, 78
metres) was the work of Rob van Erk, who
also designed the first building after the
moratorium was lifted, the World Trade
Center (1986, 93 metres). Both buildings
have the mirrored glass facades so typically
of the late 1970s and 1980s, and they stand
just a few hundred metres apart.
Coolse Poort at the Binnenwegplein.
defining the second wave
Now we have put the start of the first
wave of high-rise somewhere around 1970,
the wave starting in the 1990s must be the
second one. This second wave is not just
defined by building height only. There are
Weena with Weenatoren, Weenacenter and Delftse Poort.
indications that we are dealing with a new
trend. The periods before and after 1990/91
display many qualitative differences relating
to urban planning policies, architectural
design, internationalisation and the actual
use of tall buildings.
In 1993 Rotterdam Municipal Council
launched its first tall buildings policy
(hoogbouwbeleid) in a structured attempt
to steer the development of tall buildings in
the city. The architectural quality of tall
buildings from the era between 1969 and
WTC at the Beurstraverse.
1991 is mediocre at best, and for almost
two decades was dominated by the use of
mirrored glass facades. The Delftse Poort
(1991) was the last design with such facades.
The quality of architecture improved and
designs became much more diverse.
In a parallel development, the architectural
design of such buildings finally became
international. In the preceding 100 years
no foreign architect had designed a tall
building in Rotterdam, with the exception
of SOM with their three Europoint replicas
(1975/1978, 92 metres). Since the mid 1990s
foreign architects have played a major role
in tall building design in Rotterdam: Jahn’s
Fortis Bank (1996, 104 metres), Renzo
Piano’s Toren op Zuid (2000, 96 metres),
WZMH’s Millennium Tower (2000, 132
metres) and Sir Norman Foster’s World Port
Centre (2001, 124 metres); and the list is
growing.
Millenium Tower at Kruisplein.
Finally, the differences in the use of tall
buildings. Before 1990, most were office or
university buildings. The first (partial) shift
to residential use was in the Weenatoren
(1990, 106 metres) and the Weenacenter
(1990, 103 metres). The market was a little
slow to adapt to this change, but the
Schielandtoren (1996, 101 metres) and the
Hoge Heren (2000, 102 metres) made the
breakthrough. Many proposals are now for
residential uses. Y
NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 18
guidance
With these issues in mind, Rotterdam
produced its first guidance on tall buildings
in 1993 as an integral part of the strategic
plan for the city centre. Formulating such a
policy document is a clear characteristic of
the second wave, and so it deserves a closer
look.
The 1993 guidance covers both urban design
and urban planning. The hoogbouwvisie
allowed tall buildings only along the ‘urban
axis’ formed by Coolsingel, Schiedamsedijk
Official high-rise zones.
and Erasmus bridge, along the Weena and
along the river Nieuwe Maas (Wilhelminapier,
Kop van Zuid). John Worthington (DEGW)
advised the city to treat its reconstruction
architecture along the boulevards with
care. He proposed a set back principle and
the city acted accordingly.
Concentrating all the new tall buildings
along this one axis seriously limited the
number of locations the city could provide.
Within a decade Rotterdam ran out of
suitable plots. In a further development,
the city faced proposals for buildings much
higher than had been allowed so far. The
guidance provided no answers on how to
deal with the shortages of building plots
and the proposals for super high-rise: it was
time for an update.
Almost ten years later it was again John
Worthington who gave the city advice on
how to act. DEGW proposed keeping the
building heights along the river Nieuwe
Maas relatively low and developing two
concentrations of super high-rise at the
beginning and the end of the urban axis.
The river would then form a ‘valley’. One
focal point already existed: the Rotterdam
Central transit hub. The other had to be
developed at ‘Parkstad’. The ‘valley’ concept
did not make it into the new guidance and
as a consequence the Wilhelminapier
remained a prime location for tall and very
tall buildings; the option of developing
high-rise buildings at Parkstad was
included, though. In the end the guidance
contained both quantitative and qualitative
criteria: the high-rise zones in the centre
were expanded, but not much, and the city
defined three different types of high-rise
zone, each with its own height regulations:
– High-rise zones without height
restrictions (Weena and Coolsingel)
– High-rise zones suitable for buildings
between 70 and 150 metres tall
– Transition zones adjacent to the other
two high-rise zones
These zones should not be read as
locations, but as areas in which locations
can be found. The precise sites for tall
buildings will still be determined in the
municipal zoning plan. Among the
qualitative criteria used in that process
are public space, wind hindrance, living
environment, accessibility, parking,
flexibility, mixed-use, sustainability,
construction and place.
Rotterdam’s high-rise urban areas
In 2001 the economy stagnated. The local
real estate marketed dipped, especially for
office space, the wave of super high-rise
ideas cooled off and developments at
Parkstad never took off. The tallest
buildings currently built or planned range
from 120 to 160 metres and are located
along the Weena and Coolsingel in the city
centre and at the Wilhelminapier in Kop van
Zuid. The construction of only one taller
Actual high-rise urban area.
building has been approved: the
Coolsingeltoren (187 metres, 2006). This
new tower might be a frontrunner in the
Rotterdam tradition, introducing the next,
or ‘third’, wave. It might not be. Buildings
over 80 metres are situated in the current
high-rise zones, while moderately tall
buildings between 50 and 80 metres are
spread over a vast area covering the entire
city centre. This last pattern matches the
reach of the city’s transit stations (radius
500m) rather well. Some smaller clusters of
tall buildings can be found to the west,
south and east of the centre.
If we classify Rotterdam’s tall buildings
into three broad categories – ‘less than
80 metres, 80 to 120 metres and above
120 metres’ – we can outline Rotterdam’s
high-rise urban areas. Very tall: Weena,
Coolsingel and Kop van Zuid. Tall: a central
zone reaching from Rotterdam Central to
NovaTerra / jaargang 4 / nummer 3 / oktober 2004 / 19

the Wilhelminapier. Moderately tall: the

entire centre and some smaller clusters.

where do we go from here?

This is all history, but where do we go
from here? Looking back at Rotterdam’s
policies for tall buildings we could say that
the first guidance was too strict and the
second tried to tackle a non-issue: super
high-rise. The Rotterdam skyline has seen
a number of increases in scale, but these
were moderate, never ‘super’. The fragile Weenatoren and the Lijnbaan.

equilibrium between local soil conditions,

construction costs, the building code, the
way the municipal council determines land
prices, and the price people and businesses
are willing to pay for office space or housing,
change only gradually. So far they have
generated three characteristic height
categories (<80m, 80–120m and >120m) that
could form a solid basis for a new guidance.

This new guidance should incorporate

the real lesson of the building freeze.
This was not about high-rise, but about
monofunctionalism, about modernism. The
city centre needs to continue its development The wider and more flexible high-rise urban
areas in relation to public space.
into a lively mixed-use urban environment
with a higher quality of life. From that
perspective, guidance that focuses on the main urban axis. And yet this wider area is Reactions to: hoeven@nova-terra.nl

question of where the two or three tallest
buildings in town should be is not going to
be very effective. It is unlikely that the
overall quality of the city centre will depend
entirely on the position of two or three
buildings, either positive or negative.
Instead of formulating a restrictive, reactive
policy aimed at very tall buildings, an
active, responsive approach towards
moderately tall buildings could offer better
opportunities to diversify Rotterdam’s
centre: the importance of buildings
between 50 and 80 metres should not be
overlooked. Recent interesting housing
schemes in this range to emerge are the
Witte Keizer (70 metres, 2005) and the
Hoog aan de Maas (78 metres, 2006). The
area characterised by this building height is
vast and offers much more flexibility than
the tightly controlled zones along the city’s
still well connected to the city’s transit
system and to important public spaces like
the Lijnbaan, Hoogstraat, Westersingel,
Schiedamsedijk, Goudsesingel, Blaak,
Westblaak, Rochussenstraat, Meent and
Witte de Withstraat. Upgrading the spatial
quality of these public spaces, improving
their relation to the transit system and
providing additional leisure and (food)
culture should all be part of such an
integrated tall building policy, firmly aimed
at attracting new inhabitants, businesses
and institutions to the city centre.
Such a strategy relies on an active learning
approach at all times to help potential
investors and developers find suitable
locations and guide them through the local
bureaucracy. Instead of focusing on the
future height of the Rotterdam high-rise
urban area, it may be time to explore the
potential of its full historical width.
summary
Analysis of Rotterdam’s tall buildings
reveals that every leap forward in the
development of high-rise has been
announced by a frontrunner that sets the
standard for the era to come. Three
characteristic height categories (<80m,
80 – 120m and >120m) define the zones of
tall buildings in Rotterdam. These could
form the basis for a new tall buildings
policy for the city. Instead of the current
restrictive policy aimed at very tall
buildings, an active, responsive approach
towards moderately tall buildings would
offer better opportunities for diversifying
the city centre and raising the quality of
urban life. Z