A 30m-tall, 600m-long rooftop walk designed by local architects MVRDV and Rotterdam Rooftop Days has opened in Rotterdam.
The walk starts at a sunken shopping street called the Koopgoot and leads through a series of terraces to the top of the World Trade Centre plinth. It then crosses Coolsingel street to the roof of the Bijenkorf department store. Here there will be an exhibition to showcase the role of roofs in a livable, biodiverse and healthy city.
Finally, the route leads to the roof of the Bijenkorf parking garage, where a staircase will take visitors to ground level.
The project hopes to add a “second layer” to the city, with MVRDV noting that 18.5 sq km of flat roofs remain unused in the city.
The walk is a sequel to a 2016 MVRDV project called “Stairs to Kriterion”, created to celebrate 75 years of Rotterdam’s reconstruction, which attracted 370,000 visitors.
Winy Maas, MVRDV’s founding partner said: “I want to argue for a further sequel: we should not only occupy our roofs and make them greener but also connect them so that we can offer Rotterdammers a new rooftop park. For this, the orange carpet and the bridging of the Coolsingel are a nice initial test case.”
Rotterdam Rooftop Walk will remain open until 24 June from 10am to 8pm, with tickets costing €3.50 for adults and free for children. More information is available here.
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