Red Apple: Rotterdam's new design building

The 124-metre high-rise building, designed by KCAP Architects & Planners, encompasses 231 apartments, offices, retail and restaurants on a total gross floor area of 35,000 sq. metres.  Wijnhaven Island is being redeveloped using a dynamic transformation model, which provides development guidelines that ensure a balance between new and existing construction as well as the preservation of fine views and sufficient incidence of daylight throughout the area. “By applying this model, its redevelopment substantially increases the area’s capacity and improves the residential and environmental quality,” says KCAP architect Han van den Born.

The Red Apple is accentuated in Rotterdam’s skyline by its red-striped facade pattern. The tower reveals the red bands as vertical lines which decrease in width towards the top to support its slender appearance. The bands are formed by aluminium panels which gain their colour through anodising without any other colour treatment. In the tower, they contain the load-bearing structure of the facade and adapt in width to the increasing load towards street level. In the upper block building, apartments of various sizes are grouped around a central atrium. Thanks to large apertures in the facade, this atrium also offers a stunning vista across the city. The south-west corner of the site is occupied by a slender apartment tower, with a spacious glazed lobby as ground-floor entrance and live/work loft spaces on top. All the apartments are diagonally oriented and offer maximum transparency via floor-to-ceiling glass.  The lifestyle concept and interior have been developed in cooperation with the famous Dutch designer Jan des Bouvrie.