Rotterdam Cube Houses
DRAWINGS
Project Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
The Art Cube A.K.A
Project Name:
Kubuswoningen
Urbanism High-Density Housing,
Project Type:
Residential
Commissioned in 1977-
Year Built:
Constructed from 1982-1984
Rotterdam Cube Houses has
been renovated serval times
Renovated:
since it was built in 1997-1988
and 2015.
Architect: Piet Blom
Architecture Type: Structuralism
Spaces
The “urban forest” consists of 38 small cubes and two
so-called ‘supercubes’, all linked together. Inside, the
houses are divided into three levels which are accessed
by a narrow staircase. The ground floor is the entrance
area, with a triangular area used as a living room and
open kitchen. Piet Blom called this level “alley”
because the windows directed downwards allow a
visual connection to what is happening at street level
SITE PLAN
The second floor with its windows facing up was
baptized as “sky-house” by the architect, is the
CONCEPT
sleeping area, with two bedrooms, a small living room In addition to the uniqueness of asymmetric design, the Cube Houses, in Dutch
and the bathroom Kubuswoningen, were thought of as an abstract forest, a town within a city, where each
house represents a tree and all houses together a forest. According to Blom, the
triangular top of each individual house represents an abstract tree, which, when
connected to its neighbor, becomes a sea of trees, a yellow and manufactured forest.
Blom saw a tree in each of the house-buckets and the thick cores like a log. The
complex gave him the impression of the vault of a cathedral or a forest, that’s how
Blaak Forest dubbed them.
