Location: Rotterdam, NL
Year: 2022
Site Footprint: 6.850 m2
FSI Netto: 6.3
Gross Floor Area: 43.250 m2
Total Number of Apartments: 320
Program: housing, social and commercial functions, parking
Client: AM, City of Rotterdam
Sustainability: ARUP
Structural Engineer: ARUP
Installations: -
Landscape: Buro Sant en Co Landschapsarchitectuur
Other Architects: Olaf Gipser Architects,
Braaksma & Roos Architecten

Rotterdam is rough port city with ambitions to become a vibrant growing city with a highly developed creative and cultural climate. In particular Rotterdam is focussing on densifying the (inner) city in specific places through a responsible strategy for high-rise building locations like the BaanBlok, an inner-city site along the main underground metro link. With our plan for the Baanblok we envisioned a distinctly sustainable, healthy and surprisingly comfortable urban environment as gift back to the city while through add massive new program and making the existing monumental health services complex and post war office buildings accessible and made lively for residents, workers and visitors.

Baanblok offers a multifunctional programmatic sequence throughout the complex in order to create a lively urban environment at all levels, from the Baan to the top of the tower. Fuelled by its own site DNA as a “job quarter”, a more diverse environment is created through adding more residential, live-work homes, co-working spaces, sports facilities and health amenities. The “City Lobby” functions as the heart of the complex whilst serving as a passage between Baan and Schiedamsedijk and as a connecting connector for all functions.

Our project, I AM BAAN is a 6 step plan that integrates living, working, recreation, shopping, relaxing, meeting and doing business in a high-quality sustainable urban living environment.

Step 1, identify the vibrant connection between city and district as a hingebetween the city and the district where major movements intersect: the Baan - the backbone of the district. Step 2, build the ‘future of the past’ of the newly created GGD ensemble into a collection of different morphological time layers. Step 3, upscale to a more robust urban structure through adding vertical building mass and program as a stacked urban ensemble. Step 4, make room for greenery for exercising, health and living living consciously, where a diversity of green places both stimulate and provides space for different wishes and needs. Step 5, create next level urban life through the densification of people, activities and nature through sustainable building materials, nature inclusivity, collectivity and urban densification. Step 6, work in a multi-disciplinary pressure cooker with diverse expertise, as one design force to innovate at all scales.