Category: Design

Design is shaping, inventing, creating. Concocting something that didn’t exist before. Make something come alive. A piece of furniture, a building, a city, a landscape, a world.

Troughout my career I have visualized many designs by others. Or given a boost to the design process through a glimpse in a 3D model. With equal pleasure I produce own designs. At every imaginable scale: a cassette tape box lamp, a street planetarium, and a modern turf hut or a calendar for Mars.

Martian landscape with a rover and in the foreground the wrist of an astronaut with a watch displaying slightly more than 24 hours

Design / Space art

20. August 2024

Calendars and Clocks for Mars

A day on Mars consists of 24 hours, 39 minutes, and just over 35 Earth seconds. And there are about 669 of those days, also known as sols, in a Martian year. So, on the Red Planet, Earth clocks and calendars are useless. But what are the alternatives? People on Mars A calendar for Mars? Don’t you have anything better to do, Mr. Blok? Okay, I won’t solve current world problems like war, climate change, or barrel organ terror with it. But I’m an optimist; I believe that at some point, people will live on Mars. Perhaps many people, and… Read More

Block's little Block, a tiny houseboat in a green environment with forest, water, shrubs, reeds, grass and geese

Design

14. July 2020

A Tiny Houseboat: Blok’s Blokje

About a year ago I designed Blok’s Block, a kind of tiny house XL. A compact home for adventurous urbanites, to be placed on roofs of tall buildings. That Blok was recently joined by a Blokje, a little Blok, a design for a tiny houseboat. One of the reactions I received on the Block: it is not really a tiny house. There seems to be an unofficial upper limit of 50 square meters for this. Although the Block is relatively compact, it still has a floor space of 65 square meters. Would a smaller variant be possible that does fit… Read More

Map of the metro network of Rotterdam, The Netherlands as it may look like in 2050, with three new lines and some smaller extensions

Design / Various

1. January 2020

The Rotterdam Metro in Past, Present and Future

The Rotterdam metro network is the oldest in the Netherlands. With more than one hundred kilometers, five lines and seventy stations, it is also the most extensive metro network in our country. How did that happen? What are the expectations for the future? And couldn’t that map of the line network be a little prettier? I’ll answer those questions in this blog post. The beginning The Rotterdam metro was officially opened on February 9, 1968. On that day trains started running on the first section: six kilometers, seven stations, from Central Station to Zuidplein. I was there, together with my… Read More

A compact cube-shaped house with a glass and wood facade, located on a high rooftop with a fictional Rotterdam skyline in the background

Design / Visualisation

23. June 2019

A Tiny Cube House With a View: Blok’s Block

Looking at the city from a higher point of view can generate some great design ideas. For a cube-shaped tiny house, for example. During the Rotterdam Rooftop Days, in the beginning of June, the Codrico grain silo at Katendrecht once against caught my eye. This national heritage may be the mo st beautiful industrial building in Rotterdam. At its rooftop there is a large cube made of concrete and glass. If the silo complex ever loses its current function, I’d love to make plans for its redevelopment. In the cube one could make a beautiful top end apartment . A… Read More

Artist impression of a project for the roof of Maassilo in Rotterdam, with cornfields, a glass and steel windmill, a crop circle and a pancake restaurant

Design / Visualisation

3. October 2018

The Cornfields of the Wheat District, an idea for the Maassilo Roof

The Maassilo on the Brielselaan is one of the coolest buildings in Rotterdam. As a child I was already fascinated by the huge concrete block that you could almost touch when traveling to the city center with the metro. So when this summer a competition was organized to design a skybox on the tenth floor and to come up with an idea for the roof of the Maassilo, I didn’t need to hesitate to join. The same was true for about sixty other designers and design teams from Rotterdam and wide surroundings. History A nice side effect of the competition… Read More

Light trails from cars in the tunnel under Koninginneplein in Venlo at night with slow traffic next to the tunnel.

Design / Photography

21. November 2017

Venlo revisited: the Koninginneplein Tunnel

The tunnel under Koninginneplein (or should I say Queen’s Square?) in Venlo was completed in 2011. It ensured a smoother and prettier transition between the railway station and the city center. Through traffic went underground; from now on pedestrians could easily and safely walk into the city. Glass panels My Royal HaskoningDHV colleague Mari Baauw was the architect of the project. I had the honor to design the glass panels in the railing between the underpass and the ground level. Six years later It was not the only reason, but the Koninginneplein tunnel was my main goal when I traveled… Read More

View from outside to a condo, a compact urban luxury appartment for two people and a cat

Design

19. May 2017

Rumah Kecil: a Tiny House Extra Large

Some time ago I took part in a design competition organized by the Sint Trudo housing corporation in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The assignment was to design a condo, a compact apartment in an urban context. To be precise: in Strijp-S, the former Philips area, which is being developed into a vibrant city district. My submission did not win a prize, but I nevertheless want to show it on my blog. The name of my design: Ruma Kecil, which is Indonesian for Tiny House. Luxury The word condo, I suppose, is derived from condominium. It’s frequently used in the United States… Read More

The Barge at Night, artist impression of the new Feyenoord stadium on the banks of the river Nieuwe Maas in Rotterdam

Design / Visualisation

10. October 2016

The Barge: a New Stadium for Feyenoord

There has been talk for years about a new stadium for Feyenoord, to replace the legendary football temple, also municipal monument, De Kuip (The Tub).Allthough I am not as frequent a visitor of the stadium as some of my fellow townspeople, I also have my memories of De Kuip. For example, of a competition match of Feyenoord against Vitesse: 2-1. Pierre van Hooijdonk was still playing then, so it must have been a while ago. Much longer ago I was at the best concert of the (twentieth) century by Eric Clapton. With Elton John as a disastrous support act and… Read More

Interior picture of the basement of the Orange Bridge after adaptation to a hotel suite, with double bed and ship stairs.

Design / Visualisation

30. April 2016

Sleeping in a Bridge Keeper’s Cabin in Schiedam

In Schiedam, at a stone’s throw from my place of birth, is the Orange Bridge. This structure from the thirties spans the New Harbour. Since early this year, the bridge keeper’s cabin is managed by fellow photographer, local resident, architecture lover and Schiedam promoter Jan Sluijter, who uses it to organize exhibitions and other events. Here’s a pre-announcement: on 2 and 3 June there’s an exhibition about the architecture of Dudok, including my Bijenkorf triptych. A suite in the basement Under the bridge keeper’s room is a basement, which is accessible via a ladder in one of the towers of… Read More

Een virtueel relief waarin de vlaggen van de 28 EU-lidstaten zijn verwerkt

Design / Digital art

8. June 2015

The Colors of the Union: 304888344611713860501504000000 Ways to Make a Flag

In 2002, my former employer Rem Koolhaas designed a European flag. His idea: a kind of bar code with the colors of the flags of the member states of the European Union, arranged from east to west. One of the places where the design was used is the Museumpark in Rotterdam. A brilliant idea, in my opinion: it symbolizes variety and unity and it is immediately recognizable. The flag may only be a bit hard to draw without errors, but that’s true for many flags. (How are the American stars arranged? And did we start with a red or a… Read More