Together with team members GROUP A and Roukens + Van Gils, Studio Makkink & Bey designed the interior of De Rotterdam, a design by OMA which is located next to the iconic Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam. Rotterdam's municipal offices occupy the 33 floors of the middle tower out of three. De Rotterdam was designed as a vertical city. In which the middle high-rise serves as a passageway to other parts of the building, i.e. a place to meet in transit. The interior design reflects a 'vertical city' linking 'urban hubs' for meeting, collective use, exchange of expertise. In other words, the infrastructure of movement prompts interaction between people of all offices present and a facilitated meeting space upgrades the time spent waiting to reach another destination to a more serviceable, informal pause. Because the floor plan of this center space is identical on every floor, our design cuts through this uniformity so that each corner of the building is at one time furnished for public use. Each part of the day, the public area on one of the floors is sunlit, while the windows of the public spaces combined provide a 360 degree view over the city.
The various facilities are spread across all floors in transit spaces and are self service based units and meeting places for another kind of concentration. The caretakers' offices in the middle of each floor are neat see-through boxes with metal tool walls. This makes the handyman easy to speak to and the caretakers unit easy to organize. At the service units, people stand or sit opposite each other at eye level to keep an equal position, even when sitting on the high chairs. At the same time the height of the swivel chair and service desks contributes to the ability to stay mobile and work while waiting to be serviced. In one area the grandstand provides an long vista over the Maas river for clearing the mind and allow for pondering over a thorny issue or aim for that one eureka moment. This is where looking over the city in silence instills another kind of concentration that is needed to produce new ideas and cut through the typical work mode.