[ronald1987]

First of all, Happy Canada Day to y'all!! Hope you're enjoying the long weekend.

Thursday night I went downtown and took some pics of the city.
Note: Rotterdam is a very un-European city,
because in the Downtown area there are mainly offices and,
even though the're trying to bring residences to downtown,
the place can look deserted after business hours.
Having said that, I hope you can still appreciate the
architecture I'll try to show you in this thread.

I'm going on vacation to Germany and Austria tomorrow (by train, I'll grab the ICE). I hope to show you some shots of Munich, Salzburg and alpine Austria in a few weeks.

Here we go!

Weena, a big avenue surrounded by office towers.


The Westin Hotel and a clear blue sky.



All the following pics were taken at Weena.




Art?






Let's zoom in a little.


Trams




The country's tallest.


I love this building!






The Westin reflected in the ING building (named Delftse Poort).


Schouwburgplein feat. a world cup ad


Now, lets leave the CBD and head to the water!

Erasmus Bridge.


Building across the river.


The Euromast.




Another couple of buildings across the river.
That grey building to the right is the World Port Center. It's the office of the harbour company of Rotterdam. I did an investigation for them on the effectiveness of waterfront urban regeneration in the cities of Bremen, Emden (both in Germany) and the neighbourhood of Schiemond (Rotterdam). I finished it yesterday so now I have vacation!


To end this thread of Rotterdam, a cargo ship passing through the city waters.


Hope you all have a fantastic summer!!

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Thanks again Ronald. I just love how "wacky" some of them looked, like the Unilever building and the other with the huge portal in it at the port.

AoD

 

[Observer Walt]

Thank you Ronald, for another good set of pictures. There is some interesting architecture there, including one building which reminded me somewhat of the "flying tabletop" here in Toronto. I wonder if that was a source of inspiration for Will Alsop?

We will look forward to some shots of Eurpoe from your trip.

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

Good photos Ronald. You photography has deffinitely improved with each set of pictures you post.

Observer: There are a lot of examples of "table top" like design in Holland. Actually the Alsop designed condo tower proposed for Toronto really looks like I was lifted straight from a Dutch architecture firm.

One thing I have noticed is that there are many Dutch buildings (towers) where the ground floor is largely empty and the building appears to be on stilts. Maybe Ronald can shed some light on why this is (I always assumed it was because of the low lying land and a sort of protection against damage from flooding).

 

[adma]

The thread title reminds me of that great (?) 1981 one-hit wonder "Sausalito Summernight" by Diesel--a Dutch group, by the way.

Was that intentional?

 

[mpolo2]

Is there any of the historic city centre/port still intact after the war?

 

[ronald1987]

Thanks everyone for your kind reactions.

You photography has deffinitely improved with each set of pictures you post.

Thanks, I get my inspiration from (lots of) other photo threads at this forum and at SSP. There are so many great photographers out there, it's inspiring to see their works.
I enjoy seeing photos from all around the world and feel like making a contribution.

adma, the title wasn't intentional. I haven't heard of that song.

Antiloop: buildings sitting on stillts are common in Europe, you'll see that it's very common in Italy or Austria when I post pics from my trip, from which I returned home today.
Between the stillts and the fronts of the buildings there is a sidewalk, where people can walk without being washed away by the rain or being melted by the sun, depending on where you are.
Some offices or bars have their fronts on these sidewalks.
I'm not sure if it has anything to do with flooding. Most buildings in Amsterdam or The Hague's city centre don't have those stillts.

mpolo2, unfortunately that was all destroyed during WW2. Amsterdam's historical centre is still intact, it's the country's historical capital. Rotterdam is the modern and progressive city.

PS, I googled some Will Alsop pics. His designs look very familiar indeed! There's quite a lot of Alsop-ish buildings here.

 

[Ontarian1976]

I was just in Rotterdam last week. I plan to post some of my pictures here when I get around to getting them online.

 

[ronald1987]

^Great, so what did you think of it??
Were you just in Rotterdam or touring Holland (or Europe)?
I'm looking foreward to seeing your pics, visitors can notice things that local's have stopt noticing... they have a fresh view on the city. Just like the stillts that were mentioned here, I am just so accustomed to them, I never really realized there were soo many of them here.

 

[Ontarian1976]

LOL, I'm looking at the dates on your pictures and looking on a calendar, and I think I was there the same day you took these pictures. Not only that, I was in some of the same spots. What time of day did you take these? I may have even seen you.

 

[ronald1987]

I was downtown because I had just bought my traintickets to
Austria. I left central station at 8.15 pm, walked around the
centre for awhile, and later went to the waterfront (I was
there around 9.00 pm). At 9.30 pm I was at the bus stop at
Weena, where there were a lot of people waiting (more than
I've ever seen for that time of the day) for line 170 to show
up. LOL, what a coincidence indeed!