Katendrecht in Rotterdam is enjoying a cultural resurgence.Iris van den Broek/Supplied
On Rotterdam’s harbour a steel helix twists skyward. Launching out of the roof of a brick warehouse, its shimmering curves catch the light to evoke creation, uncertainty and movement.
This is Fenix, a museum on the theme of migration. Opened in May, it is the first cultural work in Europe by Beijing-based MAD Architects. And the stair that twists through the middle of the building – dubbed “the Tornado” – provides a metaphor for migration’s disorientation and possibility: lifting you upward, spinning you in unexpected directions and, if fortune favours you, setting you down somewhere with a clear view. From the top, I looked out to the north across the Maas River to the skyscrapers of central Rotterdam.
Those towers are Rotterdam’s public face; the second largest city in the Netherlands is perceived as the businesslike counterpart to Amsterdam’s quaint canals. In fact Rotterdam is a fascinating place to visit. Not only does it feature contemporary buildings by Dutch icons OMA and MVDRV, but a rich palette of cultural institutions along with the spice of a worldly port city.
Fenix has a stair that twists through the middle of the building – dubbed “the Tornado.”Iwan Baan/Supplied
Fenix is a key project in the rebirth of the south side neighbourhood of Katendrecht. Built up during the city’s 19th-century boom, it housed a red-light district and was home to migrants from China, Indonesia and Suriname. In the past decade, new restaurants and cultural venues have filled converted warehouses.
Fenix captures that energy. Its building is deeply connected to the city’s nautical past. In 1923 the Holland America Line cruise ship company, which linked Rotterdam to the cities and economies across the Atlantic, built the San Francisco Warehouse, where Fenix is now housed.
Starting in 1941, waves of Nazi and Allied bombing destroyed much of the central city and the industrial port. The warehouse was rebuilt in two parts. The local Droom en Daad Foundation acquired it a decade ago, and remade it as part of an effort to expand the city’s cultural facilities.
People hang out at Fenix Food Factory on the waterfront in Katendrecht in July. Over the past 10 years, converted warehouses have become home to new restaurants and cultural spots.BARBARA LABORDE/Getty Images
Fenix’s ground floor, designed with local firm Bureau Polderman, includes an excellent gelato shop and also a social space called Plein. Conceived as an indoor city square, the 2,275-square-metre zone hosts performances and community gatherings. There is a café and newsstand, foosball tables and table tennis; as I walked through the crisp space, bathed in light from tall industrial windows, a quartet of middle-aged men were joshing in Cantonese as they played a vigorous game of table tennis, their laughter carrying across the hall.
Fenix now features three exhibitions. The largest, All Directions, draws from the museum’s growing collection of art and artifacts. It begins with a painting by Willem de Kooning – once a homesick emigrant from Rotterdam.
Other works depict the personal transformations that migration sets in motion. Rineke Dijkstra’s Almerisa series follows a Bosnian girl who arrived in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, from her first portrait in a red ribbon tie and shiny shoes to her adulthood as a poised thirtysomething mom. The sequence is tender, but it evokes the costs as well as the payoffs of assimilation.
The new museum features three exhibitions, with the largest drawing from its growing collection of art and artifacts.Iwan Baan/Supplied
Visitors are likely to find something that speaks to them intimately. I found myself lingering over a Dutch-Italian dictionary formerly owned by a migrant. It was marked by the hard work of assimilation, much like the Italian-English dictionary that belonged to my emigrant grandmother.
Outside the museum and across Deliplein, the adjacent square, early-20th-century brick workers’ housing has been carefully maintained. One corner holds De Matroos en het Meisje, a restaurant that serves subtle Mediterranean-inflected tasting menus in a room whose Delft-blue and gingham tablecloths channel Dutch conviviality.
From here, a short bridge leads to Wilhelmina Pier, once home to the Holland America Line and the departure point for many thousands who sailed for the New World. It was nicknamed “Handkerchief Pier” for the waves of tearful farewells that took place here.
At the pier’s tip stands Hotel New York, the former Holland America Line headquarters. Built in 1901, the building’s green-tiled roof and copper-topped towers are visible for miles. Its interior mixes maritime memorabilia with a café serving oysters, sole and coffee under globe lights. In the 1990s the Dutch architect Winy Maas of MVRDV lived here for a time. “This was where the rest of the world began, the wilderness,” he once recalled, describing a period when artists and designers found space to work and live.
A building shaped by flows of goods and people, Fenix embodies Rotterdam’s state of constant flux.Iwan Baan/Supplied
These days, Wilhelminapier houses the country’s tallest building, named simply De Rotterdam. Designed by the world-famous Dutch firm OMA, this blends housing, office, hotel and restaurants in a bundle of tall slabs that feels both corporate and very weird.
Contemporary Dutch architecture often delivers such a mix of sensibilities, and Rotterdam is an open-air museum. MVRDV, one of Holland’s best-known architecture firms, delivered its famous Markthal, the food market that is capped by an apartment building shaped like an inverted U and decorated with a mural of oversized produce. A few minutes away is the Museumpark. Its offerings include Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, an open-storage art museum by MVRDV; and Rotterdam Kunsthal, a brilliant early building of OMA’s that brings a constantly rotating presentation of contemporary art.
Nieuwe Institut, the Dutch national museum of architecture and design, is a must-visit. It provides an encyclopedic take on Dutch design and, until Oct. 11, an exhibition on MAD Architects that features their their work on Fenix. (Their “Marilyn Monroe towers” that stand in Mississauga also make an appearance.)
Back across the water, Katendrecht continues to evolve. The Netherlands Photo Museum will open its new home here in late 2025, joining Fenix as part of the neighbourhood’s cultural resurgence. Together, they signal a district that balances the echoes of its port past with the energy of contemporary life.
Fenix embodies the city’s constant flux. It is a building shaped by flows of goods and people, reimagined for a century in which migration remains central. Rotterdam has always been in motion; at Fenix, you can feel the currents run.
If you go
It’s easiest to fly into Rotterdam via Amsterdam Schipol Airport, which is served by direct flights from Toronto via Air Canada and KLM. Frequent express trains ($24.50) connect the airport to Rotterdam Central Station.
We stayed at the Hotel New York (rooms from $200), where the old offices have been converted into spacious rooms with 15-foot ceilings and nautical memorabilia, and huge windows overlooking the harbour. hotelnewyork.com
The writer was a guest of Rotterdam Partners. It did not review or approve the story before publication.
