International project:
Project: Casa Tunquen
Market Hall
NEW
Rotterdam has a new icon: Markthal Rotterdam. At a historical location at the
Binnenrotte, next to Blaak Station and the largest open air fresh food and hardware
market in Rotterdam, the first covered market of the Netherlands was realised.
M
arkthal includes a huge
market floor on the ground
floor under an arch of
apartments. Its shape,
its colourful interior and
the height turns Markthal
into an unique spectacle.
Unique is not only its shape
and size, but especially the
way the different functions
are combined. The combination of an apartment
building covering a fresh food market with food shops,
restaurants, a supermarket and an underground
parking is found nowhere else in the world.
In October 2004 the team of Provast developers
and architecture studio MVRDV won a competition
organised by the city of Rotterdam for the design
and construction of a market hall at Binnenrotte. The
municipality wanted to extend the existing open air
market with a covered addition. According to stricter
European rules in the future the open air sale of fresh
and chilled food would not be permitted anymore.
Next to this the municipality wanted to augment the
amount of inhabitants in the city centre in order to
create more capacity for the services in the area.
The demanded programme – housing, parking and
a market hall – asked for an obvious solution: two
residential slabs with an economically constructible
market hal