Museum exploration in Rotterdam: Our MVRDV intern from the Baumeister Academy has now taken a look inside the museums after her first bike tour.

Over the past few weeks, winter has, somewhat belatedly, made way for spring. Tulips, daffodils and picnic blankets are sprouting up all over Rotterdam. In the office, by 4 p.m. at the latest, you can smell someone, definitely not an architect, leaving work and firing up the charcoal grill. At times like this, even the most passionate architects find it difficult to concentrate on precast concrete elements. I have to admit, I’m really happy when I can hear the rules pattering on the skylight above us. Apart from the weather, routine has dominated my life in my second month. It certainly feels like I’ve been working at MVRDV for far longer than just two months. I wake up before the alarm clock and yet I always leave the house at the last second. I know all the traffic light and bridge phases. I have tried out all the tees and even more so all the window opening types, canopy geometries, façade folds, concrete surfaces, joint patterns, shading elements, entrance situations, lighting concepts, façade lettering, glazing types, … The fascinating thing is that I could continue this list endlessly and there would still be an endless number of unanswered questions with an endless number of variants. I think it’s precisely this complexity that makes the profession of architect so exciting. Or it’s the more bizarre moments when you’re standing on the table on the terrace, a model in one hand and an iPhone in the other, doing the craziest contortions to catch the last rays of sunlight of the day for the perfect photo.

There is a beautiful, naturally artificial lake in the north-east of Rotterdam that I like to take a walk around after work. Here, the exciting symbiosis of nature and metropolis, which can be found everywhere in Rotterdam, is taken to the extreme: sometimes you come across a flock of sheep bleating happily, with windmills and sailing boats in the background, all set against the impressive Rotterdam skyline. Such contrasts can be found here at any time: The picturesque Delfshaven encircled in the 21st century, the historic trading house of the Holland-America Line next to Rem Koolhaas’ latest skyscraper and, last but not least, the petting zoo between the expressway and the soccer stadium.

It is precisely these contrasts that are currently being wonderfully documented in the city’s photo museum. The exhibition shows the development of Rotterdam through the origins and evolution of photography. Other museums also have exciting things to offer. In Huis Sonnenveld, a villa built in the Dutch “De Stijl” style, there is currently an intervention by designer Petra Blaisse in which the entire floor of the house is transformed into a reflective surface. Maddeningly, we did not understand until the end that this reflective floor is not a contemporary element of the design, but only a temporary intervention. Although highly impractical, we were totally thrilled by the spatial effect of the reflective surfaces and, above all, by the architect’s grit.

I visited many other museums and exhibitions during these two months – some were actually quite impressive. However, only one museum really managed to surprise me: The Natural History Museum of Rotterdam. It’s a small but very beautiful museum and, as you might expect, it’s full of bones and stuffed animals. Above all, however, it has that certain laid-back attitude that we admire so much in the Dutch and that we Germans are completely lacking. For example, pubic lice, including their natural habitat, are exhibited in a display case, with the note that due to the increasing destruction of their natural habitat, the pubic louse has been added to the red list of endangered species. And that the museum has therefore decided to help save the last remaining specimens for the future. In another display case, the museum exhibits all the specimens that could not be identified, with the comment: either we are dealing with previously undiscovered species here, or the taxidermists were simply particularly creative (I’m guessing the latter). A large special exhibition deals with biodiversity in the city; bird nests made of steel wire and the stomach contents of urban foxes are exhibited here. Architects in particular should not miss this exhibition, as it shows us who the potential inhabitants of our green roofs and façades are and what rats, pigeons and the like really want. However, the absolute highlight of the museum, the private collection of a Dutch woman, comes last: a room full of fly swatters!

The Baumeister Academy is supported by Graphisoft and BAU 2017

Although remote, this hostel has little to do with the simple life in the countryside: The 7132 Hotel has opened next to Peter Zumthor’s thermal spa in Vals – with luxurious guest rooms specially designed by and for (star) architects.

Although remote, this hostel has little to do with the simple life in the countryside: The 7132 Hotel has opened next to Peter Zumthor’s thermal spa in Vals – with luxurious guest rooms specially designed by and for (star) architects.

It is said that ingenious architectural designs are sometimes created on napkins. What is certain, however, is that the thermal baths in Vals had already been built out of words before they were realized: “You have to build something,” Peter Zumthor had assured the Graubünden community, “that doesn’t exist yet. Not glass fun. But a thermal spa that is unique.” It was opened in 1996 – and the building, which is set into the slope, is made of concrete and 60,000 strips of Vals quartzite in three thicknesses, two widths and each 3.20 meters long.

The iron-rich water has dyed the wall at the entrance a rusty red, where it flows unfiltered. Otherwise, the thermal baths, which were listed as a historical monument just two years after they were completed, do not show their age; 190 people still book a few hours every day to bathe in the magnificent architecture and in water that is between 14 and 35 degrees and rich in calcium sulphate hydrogen carbonate. The spa architecture has won countless awards, but unfortunately its figures have never been as black as the quartzite from which it is built. Peter Zumthor would have liked to take over the spa himself, but the cash-strapped municipality narrowly opted for a buyer who promised to take over not only the spa but also the surrounding hotel and apartment buildings from the 1960s and turn them into a four-star hotel: the four-star “House of Architects” and the five-star superior hotel “7132” – incidentally the zip code of Vals. Guests can not only bathe in luxury, but also live, eat and travel in luxury – the restaurant at the 7132 has been awarded two Michelin stars and 18 Gault Millau points. And the price of the penthouse suites includes arrival in the hotel’s own helicopter.

The renovation began in 2012: Thom Mayne made the entrance area look a bit like the Guggenheim in New York and, like Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma and Peter Zumthor, who had already designed so-called “Provisorien” for the opening of the thermal spa in the old spa hotel, transformed the shoebox rooms into suitably chic “rooms for architects”. The “Star” architects were not able to enlarge the 73 guest rooms, which are just 20 square meters in size; only for the suites in 7132 were several of the shoe boxes combined. But there was obviously enough room for a very different design: Zumthor immersed his rooms in bright red and black Stucco Lustro. Thom Mayne also opted for black: he wallpapered the walls, floor and ceiling with Vals quartzite and brightened up the gloom with a neon yellow bath egg. While Kengo Kuma and Tadao Ando worked minimalistically, as expected: Kuma implanted his rooms with a wooden cocoon made of oak, Ando focuses on not distracting from the view. Guests are now spoiled for choice.

The article about the 7132 hotel was published in Baumeister 05/2020.