Rotterdam's Cube Houses

by Norman Gabitzsch

Title

Rotterdam's Cube Houses

Artist

Norman Gabitzsch

Medium

Photograph - Fine Art Photography

Description

By the end of the Second World War, the strategic port city of Rotterdam had been leveled by bombardment. The Dutch went about rebuilding the important city with new experimental architecture. The Cube Houses are a set of innovative houses built in Rotterdam and Helmond in the Netherlands, designed by architect Piet Blom and based on the concept of "living as an urban roof": high density housing with sufficient space on the ground level, since its main purpose is to optimise the space inside. Blom tilted the cube of a conventional house 45 degrees, and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pylon. His design represents a village within a city, where each house represents a tree, and all the houses together, a forest. The central idea of the cube houses around the world is mainly optimizing the space, as a house, to a better distribution of the rooms inside.

Three test versions were first constructed in 1974, and in 1977 18 houses were constructed in Helmond. The many houses required for a woonwoud (English: living woods) were never realized. The houses in Rotterdam were designed in 1977 in a plan of 55, of which 39 were built. The cube houses in Helmond surrounded a theater, Theater 't Speelhuis, which was destroyed by a large fire on 29 December 2011.

Photograph made with a Nikon D850

Copyright (c) 2019 Norman Gabitzsch. All Rights Reserved.

Uploaded

September 1st, 2019

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