Dur­ing World War II, the old centre of Rotterdam was com­pletely des­troyed. What remained was a city without a heart. After the war, plan­ners saw the res­ult­ing tab­ula rasa as a chance to real­ize a mod­ern city cen­ter with a rad­ic­al sep­ar­a­tion of func­tions.

In the late 1990s, the uncon­ven­tion­al square design of Schouw­bur­g­plein and the cul­ture cluster of Museumpark, includ­ing the Dutch Archi­tec­ture Insti­tute, were cre­ated in the city centre. Then the most recent leap across the river took place: With the Erasmus­bridge, Rotterdam has­n’t only acquired a new land­mark, but also laid a con­nec­tion between the city centre and har­bour pen­in­sula Kop van Zuid, which has been con­ver­ted into a 120 hec­tare hous­ing- and office area over the last years.

Now the pro­ject is near­ing com­ple­tion, and gentri­fic­a­tion is extend­ing to the adjoin­ing pen­in­sula Katendrecht.

But the city centre has also under­gone a change over the last dec­ades. More and more res­id­en­tial sky­scrapers have been inser­ted, in an attempt to densi­fy the area. In com­bin­a­tion with new megapro­jects, such as the Cent­ral Sta­tion, mul­ti­func­tion­al highrise De Rotterdam by OMA and the Mar­ket Hall by MVRDV, this has res­ul­ted in a thor­ough rean­im­a­tion of the post-war city.