Completed
Riverside Contemporary
A civic art museum organised as a sequence of top-lit galleries stepping down toward the Maas, giving the collection a continuous datum from street to water.
Sector
Cultural
Client
Institutional
Location
Rotterdam, NL
Area
8,400 m²
Year
2024
Status
Completed
01 — Context
The site sat between a nineteenth-century embankment and an active shipping channel, long treated as the back of the city. The commission asked for a public institution that could reconcile these two edges without turning its back on either.
Fig. 02 — Interior study
02 — Concept
We set a single horizontal datum through the building and let the galleries descend from it in measured increments, so visitors read their position relative to the river as they move through the collection.
Drawing — General arrangement plan
03 — Materials
Board-formed concrete, patinated bronze glazing frames, and untreated oak floors. Materials were chosen to weather visibly, registering the passage of time as part of the building's argument.
Fig. 03 — Material detail
04 — Outcomes
Opened to 140,000 visitors in its first six months and shortlisted for the national museum prize. Daylighting reduced gallery lighting loads by 38 percent against the institutional baseline.