IT'S ART
11 Sep 2019
With plans to open in the next year, the world’s first publicly accessible art depot in Rotterdam will feature 151,000 publicly-accessible artworks, a rooftop café, a mirrored glass façade and more!
In 2014, MVRDV revealed plans to build the world’s first publicly accessible art depot in Rotterdam. Now, five years later, the museum building has officially topped out ahead of its scheduled public opening in 2021.
The structure will contain 151,000 publicly-accessible artworks, as well as a rooftop café surrounded by 75 birch trees. Now at its full height of 39.5 metres, the building will eventually boast a mirrored glass façade consisting of 1664 panels.
Image © Ossip van Duivenbode
Serving as the new archive building for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, a major art institution in the Dutch city, construction on the MVRDV-designed building got underway in March 2017. In July 2018 the floor of the first storey was cast and the construction of the other floors began. The process of mounting the cladding panels began in April 2019, and at the end of September 2019, the first 18-metre-long visitor staircase was installed in the atrium, followed by the other staircases.
Immediately upon entering the building, visitors will get a sense of the size of the collection and the range of the depot’s activities. Guests can either take an express elevator to the rooftop restaurant and terrace, where they can enjoy views of the city or buy a ticket and wander through the remainder of the building. Visitors will get glimpses of the various storage facilities and technical spaces, where they can see artworks being restored, silver being polished, and masterpieces being packed for transportation to exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad.
Via designboom | Images © MVRDV