BaanBlok
Rotterdam, NL
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
In collaboration with Architects: Olaf Gipser Architects,
Braaksma & Roos Architecten
Rotterdam is a port city with a raw edge and big ambitions: to grow into a vibrant metropolis with a strong creative and cultural climate. A key strategy is focused inner-city densification, using carefully selected high-rise locations such as BaanBlok, positioned along a major metro corridor. Our proposal for the BaanBlok envisions a distinctly sustainable, healthy and surprisingly comfortable urban environment—adding substantial new programme while unlocking and revitalising the existing monumental health-services complex and post-war office buildings. The project is conceived as a gift back to the city: a place where residents, workers and visitors share a lively, mixed and inclusive piece of Rotterdam, grounded in mobility, heritage and everyday public life. It transforms an introverted ensemble into an active urban destination. A single, singular tower combined with a complex armature of connections across multiple ground levels allows the project to function as one integrated whole.
BaanBlok is structured as a continuous programmatic sequence, creating urban intensity from street level to the top of the tower. Building on the site’s DNA as a “job quarter”, the plan introduces a richer mix of uses: housing, live-work units, co-working, sports and health amenities. A central “City Lobby” forms the heart of the complex, functioning as a passage between De Baan and Schiedamsedijk and as the connector that ties all functions together. Under the title I AM BAAN, a six-step strategy guides the design: strengthen the Baan as the district’s backbone and hinge; embrace the layered identity of the renewed GGD ensemble; add vertical mass as a stacked urban composition; carve out diverse green places for exercise, health and respite; intensify urban life through collective spaces, nature-inclusive design and sustainable materials; and deliver innovation through a multidisciplinary “pressure cooker” process, aligning expertise across scales and disciplines.
