City with a Modern Heart

Jason navigates the construction surrounding Rotterdam's train station.
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Rotterdam. Rotterdam is not like other Dutch cities, nor does it want to seem like them. The choice to embrace modern architecture, community planning and international commerce was foisted on this southern Holland port town by the cruel effect of German retaliatory bombardment in 1940 which made refugees of tens of thousands of peace-loving Dutchmen and tore out the historic heart of their community.

The heart is the preferred local metaphor for the missing city, commemorated in every field of the arts, in place names, and in the vernacular. The firestorms which erased 400 years of craftsmanship and history gave way to an urban renewal scheme of gargantuan proportions, both in width and height. Modern towers, pedestrianized shopping streets, breathtaking design and wider, open boulevards somehow mix Dutch and modern elements into a streetscape that evokes Portland and Minneapolis and Vancouver too.

Modern towers, shopping streets, breathtaking design and open boulevards mix Dutch and modern elements.

Guy explores installation art.
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In six years of fairly regular visits to the Netherlands we have never taken the short trip to Rotterdam, always due to other plans but ultimately, because we did not realize just how interesting we would find it. Now we're beginning to get a sense of what we've been missing.

After waiting so many years to visit, the 24 minute train ride just underscored how silly we had been for so long. We arrived at the soon-to-be-replaced Centraal Station and dodged subway and tunnel construction a few blocks to the very friendly and modern visitor center. With helpful local maps and recommendations it took us only a few minutes to orient ourselves and head off to the Boimans Museum, the leading local art institution and repository of a sweeping at collection spanning the whole of modern Europe's history.

Jason comes across an old favorite.
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Highlights included a series of installation pieces in which the visitor is invited into whimscal boxes with windows allowing passers-by in the hall to gaze in at the artwork, which includes you. One piece is in progress for its second year, accreting crystalline growths of pink fertilizer mix along networks of tube, another aquirt pumped out every 10 seconds or so on a timer. The growing stalactites hang over a bench allowing one to gaze up at their hypnotic presence. Other rooms feature lighted miniature sculpture in a bubble in a dark room, or a bed under a canopy of bones, or a tree branch/butterfly suspension in a thickly carpeted room with distint bumps and lumps in the carpet intended for sockfooted visitors only (as commanded by the sign outside).

The Erasmus Bridge towers over the Maas River.
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We cannot recommend the Boimans highly enough, for its collection dating to the 13th century, through today - including thoughfully curated collections of modern commercial goods and objects, models for toasters that never were. Strange installations, a huge manufactured East German pottery exhibition, and a great selection of contemporary art. I even saw the real Franz Marc "The Lamb" which I had as a poster in college before it got shredded, and shed, in too many moves. It was haning in some room when I rounded a corner.

Jason pauses in front of the "City without a Heart."
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A few well-enjoyed hours there led us to yearn to see the water. The mighty Maas which transects Rotterdam was a brief walk away and swelled past us, cold looking, tickled by small pleasure craft and furrowed by bulky barges. The Erasmus bridge towers above gracefully, superior and serene, perfectly symbolizing the city's forward looking character, its inclusiveness, and its youth.

Under the bridge, through the local Walk of Fame (we stepped on the handprints of Lionel Ritchie) and around the harbor's end brought us to the famous "City Without a Heart" scultupure in an open plaza framed by old ships and skyscrapers. We continued on, down a multilane modern auto-friendly boulevard which passed beneath our next destination, the famous Cube Houses.

Ahhhh, modern architecture.
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Cubes tilted toward a diamond orientation, sitting on brick towers, a few larger ones domineering over smaller bretheren - all in a row, along a second-story brick plaza crossing the highway. These are the whimsical modern architectural contribution of Piet Blom in 1984. Each cube on a pole is a tree in a conceptual forest-village which enlivens the surrounding area, with its clear cisght lines across a large plaza, in an indescribable way.

Inside the museum cube (2 Euro admission, well worth it) you see a small modern Dutch apartment on three levels. The entry level and ascending staircase are in an inverted pyramid wall structure, with walls angling outward as you ascend and enter an office/living room/ kitchen progression. Upstairs the master suite with bedroom, bath, second room, tiny deck access to the space between the tilted cubes - and upstairs, in a pyramid shaped room, a loft living space with large windows perfect for painting, daytime napping, casual lounging with friends. The gift of these spaces, from the architect, is a fresh take on the rhythms of your life, how unconventional arrangements of walls and shapes can make chopping your dinner garnish vegetables feel like daring performance art.

Post-cube, already dreaming of our newly amended Dutch life in which we dwell in Rotterdam instead, we passed the historic cathedral restored since the ravages of the 1940 fire, and crossed a whole neighborhood of shopping streets, a small Chinatown and a long street of modern public housing (more likely in this future scenario than a treasured cube) before coming full circle in front of an appealing brown cafe (a local term for a heavily-smoked-in, nostalgic and historic local bafe/pub). A few Heineken Extra Cold (50 eurocents more for a frozen glass??) put us in a reflective state and got us carrying on at length about the positive first impressions we've formed about this very special place.