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VEGETAL
VAULT
Despite its gutsiness, MVRDVs
new market hall is emblematic of
Rotterdams inability to conceive
and sustain a sense of urban life

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REPORT

ROB BEVAN
You cant use the word provocative after
9/11, reckons Winy Maas. It could suggest
architecture as incitement to violence or
discord. But in a positive sense, he accepts
that MVRDVs covered market for Rotterdam
is exactly that: a provocation about scale,
about contextuality, about food culture
and how we live.
It is also about bringing vitality back to
central Rotterdam a painfully slow process
that must address the blitz of May 1940 that
saw only 12 city-centre buildings survive
thesubsequent firestorm, clearances and
thezoning of the post-war rebuilding that
helped depopulate the inner city.
Visit today and Rotterdam, a municipality
with a population of 618,000 is still curiously
quiet, especially after dark. Lamps glow
inapartment windows and some restaurants
are busy but the streets are empty. Life has
been dispersed and what remains is in what
Maas calls a city of spots; areas such as
the pre-war survivors Witte de Withstraat
and Delfshaven where something of the
citys earlier vigour survives if muted.
Some locals put it down to Rotterdams
working-class, nose-to-the-grindstone culture
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(Rotterdammers, it is said, buy their shirts

with the sleeves already rolled up).
MVRDV has just created a new spot with
its 175 million Markthal. It faces an open
space the size of Beijings Tiananmen Square
between Blaak and Binnenrotte that is
occupied only twice a week by a large outdoor
market of about 450 stalls. Stallholders are
usually itinerant, travelling from town to town
for market days. The rest of the week it lies
empty, a great north-south gash in the city
like a landing strip separating the pound-shop
infested dog-end of the shopping district from
the finer streets around Pannekoekstraat.
The latter was rebuilt shortly after the war in
a humane brick Modernism along the pre-war
street pattern another successful patch of
city life, if under-scaled, and a testament to
what might have been but for a change of tack
and the tabula rasa planning that followed.
Once the heart of the historic city, the
Rotte river ran here, culverted in the 19th
century and later filled by a north-south
railway viaduct, but the line too has since
been buried and the viaduct demolished in the
name of urban design. The post-war buildings
that previously backed onto the line then
backed onto the open space and were later
demolished. The late medieval Laurenskerk,
a rare blitz survivor just to the north,

Markthal,
Rotterdam,
The Netherlands,
MVRDV

site plan

1. (Previous spread) the

new market is housed in
a cavernous vault lined
with zingy supergraphic
frescoes of fresh produce
2. The building terminates
a vast market square
3. Visitors throng the
stalls and cafs, giving
the huge space a constant
sense of animation

however, presents its apse for inspection.

To the south is the now subterranean Blaak
station and the quarters around Oude Haven
(the old harbour) and neighbouring Wijnhaven
that after the decline of port-related industry
on this stretch of the waterfront sat mostly
idle for many decades.
The Markthal is one of many projects that
have from the mid-80s onwards attempted to
fill this yawning urban gap. In the first month
since it opened in October, it had attracted
a million curious visitors an astonishing
number in a country of 16 million all eager
to see a 40m-high vault entirely lined with a
vegetal mural and set within a thickly layered
crust of 228 apartments clad externally in
Chinese granite. Some 12,000 people an hour
can pass through at weekends.
The project, for Dutch developer Provast,
sprang out of the rumour that EU regulations
were about to ban outdoor markets from
selling hygiene-sensitive foods. This never
happened but the impetus to build survived
the severe post-2008 downturn in the Dutch
economy and after 10 years (five under
construction) it has arrived, a stonking
instant icon whose original purpose had
evaporated. Part of its attraction to visitors
lies in the obstreperous design, part in the
fact that the covered market was never a

Dutch building type Maas doesnt know why.

He bridles a little at the description of the
building as a triumphal arch. The form was
arrived at after a study of mainland Europes
covered food markets especially those of
Spain and France, as well aspects of the more
lifestyle orientated markets of Copenhagen
and Stockholm. EMBTs rightly celebrated
Santa Caterina market of 2005 in Barcelona
(AR November 2005) with its brilliantly
coloured waveform roof was a direct
inspiration. Maas doodles sketches showing
the evolution of his response to a brief that
demanded a market hall and two residential
blocks. Initially it was conceived of as a
pitched-roof market form flanked by two
parallel slabs of apartments. Market use

The digital supergraphics

of giant fruit and vegetables
have been likened to poppy
Sistine Chapel-style frescoes
but Maas prefers to namecheck
Brunelleschis San Lorenzo
for the arch of his vault whose
glazed ends are an elegantly
executed cable-net

and residential then fused into one structure.

It morphed into an inhabited square arch
then a portal frame then a flattened curved
arch (which could be constructed in cheaper
in-situ concrete rather than steel) whose
feet were flared out to accommodate the
developers desire for additional floorspace
in the parallel rows of restaurants and shops
that flank the market hall proper. The digital
supergraphics of giant fruit and vegetables
have been likened to poppy Sistine Chapelstyle frescoes but Maas prefers to namecheck
Brunelleschis San Lorenzo for the arch of
his vault whose glazed ends are an elegantly
executed cable-net that can flex up to 700mm
to accommodate wind loads.
The Markthal apartments are basically
single aspect but each has internal windows
that peer down onto the shoppers below.
These inclined windows decrease in angle
until they appear as one metre square glazed
panels set in the floors small light-wells
for the penthouse apartments. Beneath
street level is a supermarket anchor store,
cool storage facilities for the stands in the
Markthal and three layers of parking
the largest facility in the city.
Maas makes free with his green pen again,
sketching another line of shapes this time
the architectural menagerie that Rotterdam
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4. (Previous spread)
resembling a gigantic
triumphal arch, the glazed
ends of the market hall
are enclosed by complex
cable net structures
that can flex 700mm in
response to wind loads

section AA

first floor plan

A
4

4
3

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

entrance to Markthal
market stalls
shops and restaurants
entrance to apartments
garage access
apartment
roof terrace
penthouse
patio with market view

0
ground floor plan
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20m

Markthal,
Rotterdam,
The Netherlands,
MVRDV

section BB

7
8

8
7

eleventh floor plan

7
6

6
7

tenth floor plan

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has assembled in recent decades in its bid

to create a densified somewhere out of a
blitzed nowhere: OMAs De Rotterdam on
the south side of the river, the inverted Y
of the Van Berkel & Bos Erasmus Bridge,
the Markthal arch and what appears to be
the sawtooth roofline of Piet Bloms 1984
Cube Houses across the square from the
Markthal where the apartments cubes
are balanced on their corners.
Can such a series of discrete objects make
a city? I still believe that is possible if they
are close together. It is a very strange city
and wouldnt work everywhere but yes.
It is contextual in another way. In Rotterdam
you can only connect through diversity.
The neighbouring buildings of the
Laurenskwartier are equally doing their
own crazy thing from Piet Bloms cubes
andwitchs hat apartment tower to Group
Asfractured facade office block at Blaak 8
and Hans Kollhoffs pedimented Statendam
apartments. Immediately to the south of the
Markthal is Kees Christiaanses Jenga office
stack (Blaak 31), an HQ for law firm Loyens
& Loeff. Another wayward pile is planned
for the markets northern flank. Its a pigs
ear of planning as novelty form making.
Maas defends the monumentality of
theMarkthals pumped up architecture
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asanintriguing contradiction. He argues

thatmassing the components of the brief
inalarge-scale building has had a multiplier
effect, with the plaza in front having a nicer
atmosphere, and more shoppers now in
theoutdoor market, as well as in the covered
hall. Thats an optimistic perspective but
certainly the additional big buildings and
thelandscaping and tree-planting planned
forthe Binnenrotte frontage this March can
only help begin if not entirely successfully
to contain its brutal enormity.
For Maas, his building does exactly
whatitsays on the tin communicating its
functions directly to a viewer who doesnt
need to be a sophisticate to understand it.
It is unashamedly populist and aims to
improve Rotterdams cheap food culture
without becoming decadent or elitist.
A minority of the stallholders have come
inside where the rents are similar to those
for the pitches outdoors, but the stallholder
must be open seven days a week. Clubbing
outlets together in this way, suggests Maas,
will help small businesses survive in the
face of the retail giants.
Theres an expectation here that a city
with great market halls will have a great
food culture and it seems to apply whether
looking at Madrid, Melbourne or Montreal.

5. (Previous spread)
the full Dali-esque glory
of the vegetal vault
6. The high-end stalls are
a sedate affair compared
with the rough and ready
charm of a normal market
7. View from one of the
flats in the vault structure
8. Mid-level walkway
overlooking the market
Architect
MVRDV
Photographs
Scagliola/Brakkee
7

Markthal,
Rotterdam,
The Netherlands,
MVRDV

The reality can be entirely otherwise

though; Newcastles handsome Grainger
Market or the Kirkgate covered market
in Leeds (Europes largest), do not seem to be
noticeably improving their host communities
cuisine, for all their authenticity.
The Markthal doesnt, however, even feel
like a market despite Maass claim that some
20 per cent of stallholders are collectives
orfamily businesses. It is essentially a food
court. A great many of the stalls are places to
eat sushi, waffles, tapas, fresh juices while
the majority of others sell luxury goods such
as chocolates, nuts and European charcuterie.
Only one greengrocer was spotted on my
visit and that the type where the fruit looks
hand polished. A few chain stores have
crept in which Maas accepts as the price for
reducing the developers risk in this untested
(in a Dutch context) concept.
Admittedly, this trend is also true of
established markets such as Barcelonas
tourist-infested La Boqueria and the just
refurbished central market of Florence
each of which, like the Markthal, has a
cooking school. And, increasingly Londons
Borough market is similarly more about
destination shopping and dining. But it is still
hard to see how the Markthal significantly
adds to Rotterdams food culture beyond

There is curiosity value in

MVRDVs immovable feast
with its seemingly calculated
jolie laide proportions and it
has brought vigour to a corner
of the city demanding it
avery visible statement of investment in the
idea of it. Maybe, says Maas, the dramatic
space gives attention to peoples role
[in changing this culture]. Its intelligence is
not always clear. The below-ground servicing
and sterility of the market itself means though
that there is none of that characteristic
market buzz and messiness. For one thing
that would be inimical to the residents
looking down from above.
For all these drawbacks, the numbers
suggest that the Markthal is a commercial
success. As have been the apartments above;
half were built for sale and almost all (in
marked contrast to OMAs half-deserted De
Rotterdam) have found buyers including most
of the 24 penthouses. This despite each unit
having an exceptionally deep plan and their
market hall ends being undeniably gloomy
with their reliance on borrowed light from
the halls glazed ends. The wilful shape of

thebuilding also makes for some memorably

awkward internal spaces. One duplex
penthouse visited has a large windowless
room with a raked floor on its lower level
and two bedrooms of its three looking into
its small light-well. The suggestion that
the lightless space could be used as a
home cinema becomes less far-fetched
when you hear that one buyer is combining
two penthouses and talking of building
a swimming pool.
There is curiosity value then in MVRDVs
immovable feast with its seemingly calculated
jolie laide proportions and it has brought
vigour to a corner of the city demanding
it.But for all its noodle-headed re-shaping
andarchitectural gymnastics, Rotterdam
hasfailed repeatedly in its mission to get
urbanistically fit. Replacing the starvation
of post-war zoning with a stodgy diet
of instant icons all those big-budget
cantilevers and weirdly wobbly facades
has hindered as much as helped.
Is the Markthals alternative, say a pair
of well-considered blocks and a market hall
similar to that built in Ghent by Robbrecht &
Daemand Marie-Jos Van Hee (AR February
2013). really such plain fare by comparison?
Rotterdams grand gestures are leading
toadanger of recreating la Grande Bouffe.
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