The City of Rotterdam joins our 'Sustainable cities and tall buildings' forum

Image: view of Wijnhaven Rotterdam - courtesy Rotterdam Partners

Emiel Arends, the City of Rotterdam's Urban Designer is expected to contribute to Future Cities Forum 'Sustainable cities and tall buildings' discussion this week hosted at EY by Marcus Richards.

Emiel is a senior advisor on urban affairs in Rotterdam. He has worked on several masterplans in the city (such as the Wilhelminapier and RCD), wrote the last two high-rise visions of the city, was co-author of the inner-city plan and works on long term strategies for climate adaptation in the city.

He also works as a senior lecturer at the Rotterdam University for the department of water management and is part of the supervision team of the Zuid-as in Amsterdam. He recently wrote a book about 125 years of high-rise in Rotterdam - 'City without fear of heights: the development of a European high-rise typology.'

The forum will be joined by Dutch developer EDGE, Pilbrow and Partners, Mace Construct, British Land, Ridge & Partners, Price & Myers, Grimshaw, LDA Design and also by CityLife, the three tall tower and park district in Milan developed by Generali Real Estate.

Recently planning permission has been given by The City of Rotterdam - Gemeente Rotterdam - to the RISE development by the RED Company (designed by architects the Powerhouse Company) which includes the Hofplein Toren which will be the tallest residential tower in Europe, a project where Buro Happold has advised on the structural engineering.

Buro Happold reported:

'Buro Happold has supported the development of one of the European Union’s future landmark buildings. At 286m tall, the RISE tower will not only swiftly become the most familiar building in Rotterdam when it is completed, it is also set to become the tallest inhabited building in the European Union.

'The new development is located on the south-east corner of Hofplein, Rotterdam’s bustling central square. It consists of three towers – the two other ones at roughly 150m and 160m – with the central tower standing at nearly twice the height.

The vibrant mixed-use development will include a combination of retail, cafes, a hotel, a health centre, office space and residential apartments – of which a large percentage will fall into the category of affordable housing, opening-up high-rise city centre living to all.

'The Netherlands does not have a history of building (super) high rise towers. The tallest existing tower in the country before 2022 was only 165m, so the new structure will nearly double that height.

'Buro Happold was engaged to provide consultancy around the structural engineering of the Hofplein tower building up to building permission, bringing significant experience in working on tall towers around the world.

'The design envisions a reinforced concrete structure, with a central core and walls prolonged towards the facades to give the required stability as well as daylight requirements. The project would need to be delivered within a relatively tight construction budget, and solutions needed to be found to ensure the construction phase could be achieved rapidly and efficiently.

'Post Covid-19, the design also needed to retain fluidity, to incorporate the post-pandemic societal changes that could emerge from a constantly shifting situation. It required the design team to ask deeper questions of the plans, such as whether post-lockdown, people would see more value in larger apartment spaces, or whether the hotel facility would require fewer rooms if the hospitality industry was still in turmoil with restrictions on people’s movements and longer-term changes in mind-set towards travel.

Image: View from the nhow Rotterdam hotel on the Erasmusbridge and the skyline of Rotterdam - photograph Robin Utrecht and Rotterdam Partners