The Eye

Rotterdam Builds a Giant Staircase to Celebrate the City’s Rebuilding After World War II

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Ossip van Duivenbode

Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, whose previous work includes a stunning glass brick storefront on a historic street in Amsterdam, has built the Stairs to Kriterion, a vertiginous, monumental temporary stairway to heaven in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

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Ossip van Duivenbode

The installation, which remains in place through June 12, celebrates 75 years of post–World War II reconstruction in Rotterdam by offering those game to climb the 180 steps of the 95-foot-tall, 187-foot-long staircase both a series of perspectives over the city landscape and access to the roof of the Groot Handelsgebouw business center.  

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Ossip van Duivenbode

“The scaffolding responds to the angles of the Rotterdam Central Station, connecting the contemporary icon with a historic monument,” MVRDV said in a project description, “whilst through its construction referencing the reconstruction that the city has experienced.”

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Ossip van Duivenbode

A temporary observation deck at the top gives climbers a perch to overlook the city, as well as a chance to attend films, debates, and performances at the former cinema Kriterion, popular in the 1960s, which will be open during the staircase event.

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Ossip van Duivenbode

“I used to see Rotterdam from the Kriterion after the films and it gave an fantastic overview of the city,” MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas said in a press release. “The roof of the Groot Handelsgebouw, one of the best buildings of the reconstruction of the Netherlands, deserves to be used as a base for the next intensification of Rotterdam. The Stairs suggest that.”

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Ossip van Duivenbode

The designers said that they based the idea on a previous project by Rotterdam design firm West8, which had created a temporary scaffolding-based staircase leading up to the roof of Las Palmas, a historic building in Rotterdam. “In our design process we started with the dream of a permanent escalator which then turned into a temporary project made of scaffolding,” they added. Said Maas: “It would be good to make it a permanent fixture.”

Check out a time lapse of the construction in the video below:

Or this one, which shows people climbing the stairs and commenting on the project: