The Red Apple, Rotterdam, Netherlands

KCAP completes residential high rise development The Red Apple
Set in the prime location on Wijnhaven Island,located between Rotterdam’s city centre and the river Maas and with water on three sides, The Red Apple is a nod towards the shipping industry of Rotterdam. Its design presents the vision of stacking containers, a void creating an assimilation of movement from the upper to the lower.

The 124 m high design by KCAP Architects&Planners encompasses 231 apartments, offices, retail and restaurants on a total gross floor area of 35.000 m2

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 while preserving important qualities of the existing situation," states KCAP architect Han van den Born.

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 southwest 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. The levels 8 through to 40 contain apartments of various sizes. All apartments of the two volumes are diagonally oriented and offer a maximum of transparency via floor-to-ceiling glass and provide extraordinary views.

The Red Apple is accentuated in Rotterdam’s skyline by its ‘red striped’ façade pattern. The tower reveals the red bands as vertical lines which decrease in width towards the top to support its slender appearance. The block building is defined by horizontal layers. The red bands are formed by aluminium panels which gain their colour through anodizing without any other colour treatment. In the tower, they contain the load bearing structure of the façade and adapt in width to the increasing load towards street level.

The lifestyle concept and interior have been developed in cooperation with Jan des Bouvrie.

source: www.worldarchitecturenews.com
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