Columns

Once upon a time Rotterdam was the most famous reconstructed city of the western world. Its modern city centre was visited by architects, planners, and dignitaries from all over the world. The reason was not just that here the first pedestrian open air shopping centre was realised, but especially the values that the sparkly new centre seemed to embody. Modernity and industry rose up from the ruins of the pre-war period of dense suffocating historic city centres. Democracy, commerce, progress, and capitalism were the new truths. Then there was the specific nature of Rotterdam’s destruction that gave it its importance: the city was bombed by the German Wehrmacht to force Holland into capitulation and was an example of the brutal threat of Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Second World War.

Reconstruction is perhaps the wrong word for the rebuilding of Rotterdam after the war; the new plan was specifically designed to... Read more