Rotterdam is a city in the Dutch province of South Holland, situated in the West of the Netherlands. The municipality is the second largest in the country. The port of Rotterdam is the largest in Europe. From 1962 to 2004 it was the world’s busiest port until surpassed by Shanghai.

Rotterdam is on the banks of the Nieuwe Maas River (“New Meuse”), one of the channels in the delta formed by the Rhine and Meuse rivers. The name Rotterdam derives from a dam in the Rotte River. Rotterdam is also famous for its Kubuswoningen or Cube Houses built by architect Piet Blom in 1984.

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.

The houses contain three floors:

  • ground floor entrance
  • first floor with living room and open kitchen
  • second floor with two bedrooms and bathroom
  • top floor which is sometimes used as a small garden
Map: Rotterdam
Map: Rotterdam