De Rotterdam is sold as a “vertical city.” In reality, it’s a very smart, very large mixed-use slab on the Wilhelminapier that says more about contemporary high-rise ambition than about urban life. That’s exactly why it matters.
Sitting on the south bank of the Maas, right by the Erasmus Bridge, De Rotterdam dominates the Rotterdam skyline and the conversation around mixed-use towers. Designed by OMA under Rem Koolhaas and completed in 2013, it packs 162,000 m² of program into three 150‑meter “towers” that are, structurally and experientially, one giant building. If you care about high-rise design, city-making, or how architecture markets itself, De Rotterdam is a case study you can’t ignore.
Where De Rotterdam Sits in the City
Start with the site. De Rotterdam stands on Wilhelminapier in the former harbor district of Kop van Zuid, directly across the river from central Rotterdam. This area has been pushed hard as a “second city center” for decades: high-end offices, cultural venues, landmark towers, and waterfront promenades.
The building runs along the Maas with long views to the Erasmus and Willems bridges, the old Holland America Line pier, and neighbors like Renzo Piano’s KPN Tower and the Cruise Terminal. From most postcard angles, De Rotterdam is the anchor image: a huge, stepped cluster of glass and aluminum that announces “new Rotterdam” in one shot.
On an urban level, though, it behaves less like a stitched-in neighborhood and more like a mega-tenant. It reinforces Wilhelminapier as a prestige office and hotel strip. You get activity, sure—commuters, conference guests, residents—but not the messy, layered character of a real mixed-use district spread across many smaller buildings and plots.
De Rotterdam Architecture: OMA’s “Vertical City” Explained
The core concept of De Rotterdam architecture by OMA is the “vertical city mixed use building.” Instead of a single-function tower, OMA stacked offices, apartments, a hotel, leisure, retail, and parking into one connected cluster, then wrapped it in a unified façade.
The building is composed of three tall volumes, each about 44 floors, shifted and stacked so they appear to break apart as they rise. In drawings and long-distance views, this fragmentation reads as three towers in conversation, avoiding the monotony of a single slab. Up close, you realize they share a base, systems, and internal logic. It’s one building in a three-part costume.
The “city” idea is less about architectural variety and more about density and programmatic overlap: workers, residents, and hotel guests sharing circulation, amenities, and views. On paper, it’s a powerful argument. In use, it’s closer to a hyper-efficient stack of specialist environments tied together by a very controlled backbone of lobbies and lifts.
Program, Floor Plan, and How the Building Actually Works
The numbers are blunt, and that’s part of the story. De Rotterdam’s floor plan and program break roughly down as:
| Program | Approx. Area | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Offices | 72,000 m² | Main working floors, weekday daytime engine of the building |
| Apartments (≈240) | 34,500 m² | Residential floors with private access, views over the Maas |
| Hotel + Congress + Restaurant | 19,000 m² | Four‑star hotel, conference facilities, dining |
| Retail / F&B | 1,000 m² | Ground‑level commercial units |
| Leisure | 4,500 m² | Fitness and related facilities |
| Parking | 31,000 m² | ≈650 cars integrated into the base |
No public set of detailed plans is widely distributed, but the basic diagram is clear: public-facing functions at ground and plinth levels, then blocks of office, hotel, and residential stacked vertically. Each use gets its own zones, cores, and security lines. Shared amenities—like fitness, restaurants, and conference areas—sit where they can serve several user groups at once.
This is where the “vertical city” narrative collides with reality. A real city thrives on overlaps: errands on the way home, chance encounters at the corner café, kids crossing paths with office workers, nightlife brushing up against daytime uses. De Rotterdam’s mix is smart from a leasing and efficiency perspective, but each zone feels like its own sealed universe. The shared elements work more as circulation glue and shared services than as genuine social condensers.