Tall & Urban News

A steel and concrete apartment block dubbed Fenix I has been built on top of a warehouse in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Designed by Dutch practice Mei Architects, the project is part of a wider regeneration plan for the Rijnhaven district.

The warehouse, which dates from 1922, was built in the port district by the architect CN van Groor for the Holland America Line shipping company. It has been abandoned since the 1980s.

The warehouse structure has been converted to house a group of cultural institutions called Fenix Docks and a multi-story car park. Above the building a one-kiloton steel frame supports a stepped concrete housing block called Fenix I, which has 212 apartments on nine floors.

The steel frame separates the new concrete apartment building from the existing warehouse, with galleries and lifts connecting it to the converted warehouse space below.

A central courtyard, with homes around it, sits in the four-meter-high layer between the old and new buildings.

The apartment building has a stepped profile. It rises nine stories above the warehouse facing the Rijnhaven docks, and steps down to four levels above the warehouse on the opposite side, which faces the Veerlaan district.

The apartments have been designed to be loft-style, with open plan layouts and an industrial aesthetic to match their location.

The ring-shaped apartment block has balconies looking down to the courtyard garden on the warehouse roof, with flower boxes and trellis for climbing plants.

This inner area features white concrete and wooden facades, with timber elements that go from light to dark across the levels. The balconies of the apartments have metal details to link them visually with the warehouse below. "The balustrades of the balconies, which surround the entire building, are made of sandwiched glass and so-called 'muse frames'—repetitive industrial steel frame elements, that invite you to lean on it and day-dream," said Mei Architects, adding, "In total no less than 516 muse frames were added to the facade."

The converted warehouse is divided in two by a central corridor that serves as an entrance lobby to the apartments above.

On one side of this corridor is home to three cultural institutions – dance company Conny Janssen Danst, the Codarts Circus School and youth Circus Rotjeknor, while there is quayside housing and a parking garage for 270 cars on the other.

The façades of the warehouse have all been restored.

"On the Rijnhaven side, the original warehouse is characterized by brute concrete, the presence of large loading doors, an elongated bulky loading deck and a long letterbox window," said Mei Architects.

Its plaster façade has been repaired and the original loading docks rebuilt. Glass walls sit slightly set back in the arches where trains used to pass through on the railway leading right into the dockside warehouse.

Dutch architecture studio Powerhouse Company has designed a floating timber office complete with outdoor swimming pool that will be moored in the port area.

For more on this story go to Dezeen.