Two towers in one section
Below the datum: deep, connected floor plates for large tenants. Above: a slender shaft of smaller floors with better light. One address, two markets, one skyline figure.
Work / 04Office · Central District, Rotterdam
A competition entry beside the station: an office tower that treats its mid-height as a second ground — the floor that gave our studio its drawing vocabulary.
146 m38 floorsCompetition2028
01 / The briefWhat the city asked
The brief.
The Central District plot is the most connected square metre in the Netherlands, and every entry will maximise it. The question the jury actually asked: what does a tower owe the city between its lobby and its roof? Most answers are: nothing — thirty identical floors of lease plan.
Datum One proposes a public middle. At +62 m the tower steps back and opens a two-storey city loggia — meeting rooms bookable by anyone with a station ticket, a run of workshop spaces, and a terrace facing the tracks. Above it the tower continues thinner. The skyline reads the step; the city uses it.
Elevation studySheet 04 · Datum One
146 m,
drawn.
Every VANTA sheet marks the same three lines — plinth, datum, crown. This is Datum One from its own street corner, raised the way it will be built.
02 / CraftDrawn once, built 38 times
The details that carry it.
The loggia is not a terrace
It is drawn as a room — nine metres deep, wind-sheltered by the step above, open eleven months a year. A terrace is what's left over; a loggia is what was intended.
Structure follows the step
The setback lands on a storey-high transfer that doubles as the loggia's ceiling and the upper shaft's foundation. Nothing hidden: the heaviest move in the building is the one you stand under.
Meridian