In Rotterdam in the Netherlands there is one especially strange building, looking like
something out of a futuristic science fiction movie, but it's a food market, also with many
restaurants and bars, set in a building like you have never seen before.
It's one of the world's most unusual food markets.
At the same time it's a condominium with 228 apartments.
From the outside the building only looks a little bit unusual with that curved roof and
as you walk along the side of it you might notice the apartments with their balconies
up above.
But when you step into the building it really takes off, bringing you on a kaleidoscopic
journey that's almost like entering a fantasy land, and there's lots of great food from
all parts of the world.
The innovative shape of the roof is further complemented by the amazing mural depicting
a cornucopia of the foods that are on offer in the market, along with flowers and butterflies.
The name of the artwork is “Horn of Plenty”.
This unique artwork covers 11,000 square meters, making it reputedly the largest picture in
the world.
It was created by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam, with help from a team at Pixar Studios with
a group of animators, photographers, and special-effects.
Some call it the "Sistine Chapel" of Rotterdam.
The artist Coenen explained, "you could just look at the wonderful almost psychedelic picture
for its beauty, which points out the miracle that food is therefore you, it is a work with
the spiritual, religious feel to it.
However, it's larger-than-life size is not a tale of religion.
It's about nature."
The attraction of coming to the Markthal is only secondarily about the food, the wonderful
food that's here, with the tremendous international variety that we will show you in a moment
- but of course you can find lots of restaurants and food shops anywhere in town.
The impact of the Markthal is more about the total experience, the setting, the building,
the mural, the people, the wonderful combination of fast food, gourmet food and markets all
around you framed in some kind of miraculous building.
It's an amazing unique combination.
The Markthal in Rotterdam is one of the most outstanding modern buildings you'll ever see.
It's an incredible enclosed food court in a big U-shape, with apartments all up above
and around, and a tremendous huge food market down here in the middle.
They've got restaurants, they've got take-away foods, they've got snack bars, there is a
supermarket downstairs, a wine bar, a lot of beer, a lot of people, fresh produce, cheese,
everything you can imagine, a hundred different food booths, 20 different restaurants.
It's just a great spot in the heart of Rotterdam.
From above with Google Earth, we can get an overview of the shape of the building that
U-shape.
It's almost like an airport hangar, with apartments all around and the food court in the middle,
constructed in natural grey stone that emphasizes the colorful interior that's the building
centerpiece.
And next to it is a public park that's free and open to all, especially popular on a sunny
weekend.
There's also an outdoor market right next to it that's open on Tuesdays and Saturdays,
and features from 400 to 500 booths selling all kinds of clothing, jewelry, knickknacks,
antiques, junks, and food.
This train station has tram, Metro and bus lines that will easily bring you here, but
you can walk from here to the town center in five minutes.
Across the street you'll find two other famous attractions of the city, the strange yellow
Cube Houses, an amazing cluster of homes built on a bridge over the road, and also the Old
Harbor, a wonderful waterfront activity area with a lot of restaurants lining the shore.
We will feature all these areas in a different video about Rotterdam, but here the focus
is on the Markthal.
On the map we see the location of the Markthal and the nearby Cube Houses, the old harbor
and the flea market, the center of town, just a five-minute walk away, and the main train
station you could reach in 15 minutes on foot.
It's all rather compact in the urban center of Rotterdam.
This is not only the first covered market in the Netherlands.
It's a completely new concept.
The first building of its kind, a hybrid between Markthal and housing, creating a new urban
typology.
This combination of apartment building covering a fresh food market, with shops and restaurants,
a supermarket and underground parking, is found nowhere else in the world.
With its daily fresh food market, shops and apartments, the Markthal creates a coherence
and connections with the surrounding neighborhood.
The city government encouraged this because they wanted to increase the amount of residents
in the city center in order to create more capacity for services in the area to make
a more vibrant urban atmosphere.
It's like having an entire city center in one building where you can live, work, eat,
and play inside a piece of three-dimensional art.
You would never get bored of this place.
It's got all different cuisines and nationalities, everything under one roof.
If you're not hungry when you enter, you soon will be after walking around and enjoying
this feast of foods.
It's got cheese, noodles, pasta, pizza, sushi, frozen yogurt, fish and chips, churros, fresh
fruits, French baked goods, Italian, Spanish, Asian, Dutch, Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish,
Lebanese, Syrian, Chinese, Greek.
There's salads, coffee, cappuccino, donuts and cupcakes, chocolates, licorice, seafood,
sausages, spice, frittes, calamari, Portuguese custard tarts, nuts, herbs, dried fruits,
waffles, wine shops, bakeries, tapas, hams, olives, tapenade, juices, mushrooms, Croquettes.
There is a kitchen utility shop.
It is one of the few retail stores here in a place you could easily spend a lot of euro.
An Asian grocery store, bubble tea, sandwiches, burgers, crepes, and more.
In the center, one of the most efficient escalator complexes you'll ever see brings you down
to the lower levels, and here you will find a large supermarket, Albert Hein, and also
drugstore, a wine shop, various sundries,, and then four levels down below for parking
and storage areas for the residence with places for their bicycles.
Half the visitors to the Markthal are from the Rotterdam area.
The other half are from elsewhere in the Netherlands or outside the country.
Returning back up to the main food hall we've got a lot more to show you.
It covers a floor area about the size of two football fields.
It's 120 meters long and 70 meters wide reaching a height of 40 meters.
The Markthal was designed by architectural firm MVRDV and Provast developers.
It opened in 2014, at a cost of €175 million.
Some of the information I'm providing here came from their websites.
Trip Advisor reviewers rank this the number one attraction in Rotterdam and here's a sprinkling
sample of a few of their comments.
Another modern architectural masterpiece.
Something of a miracle, colorful and vibrant, it's iconic and charismatic, with magical
atmosphere.
It's a large indoor space but there's almost no place to sit.
What are they thinking?
Some stalls and restaurants have their upper decks available.
A weird and wonderful place that you do not want to miss in Rotterdam.
The view is stunning, colorful, in every way from the ceiling to the market stalls, not
mentioning the smells that will delight your senses.
If you like something, just don't hop on and buy it right away.
Wait till you tour the whole place, you might find something better.
Stall holders are friendly and speak excellent English.
The building was analyzed by a research company called Strabo, concluding "the Markthal is
one of the best developments that Netherlands retail has ever seen.
It is a big success."
They found visitors are positive about the accessibility, the general feel of the building,
the choice and quality of goods available.
But criticisms include complaints about the busyness, the number of seats and paying for
toilets.
It's visited by 8 million people every year and half of them are from the Rotterdam area
and the other half are from the rest of Netherlands or from abroad, with the average visit taking
at least 45 minutes.
It's such a visual feast it even attracts some local student film crews.
While you might expect that in a Dutch market, of course there is going to be lots of cheese
for sale.
But you might be surprised at the incredible variety of flavors of the cheese.
It seemed the second most-popular food item in the market is olives, they're everywhere,
whole olives and also the tapenade, that wonderful crushed olive paste in a variety of flavors,
textures and colors.
The influence of Mediterranean cuisine is found everywhere.
Another great item to purchase for your takeaway meal.
After the market closes at 8 PM the lively restaurants continue open on the outside of
the building where they can stay open much later.
This evening extension of activities onto the sidewalks all around further illustrates
how this one building is functioning as a typical market square.
The lighting at night is spectacular.
The building looks even better in the evening than during the day as we're going to show
you in a series of outside views from different angles as the sun goes down and the lights
come on.
These compelling images will show you that visiting the Markthal very late in the afternoon
for a dinner might be the best timing.
Also, the hall is much less crowded at that hour and you'll have this advantage of spectacular
lighting after you leave.
But you'll notice very few people are here to witness it from the 20,000 people who visited
each day – just some dedicated photographers.
Markthal at twilight is a beautiful sight.
You want to be here just at the right moment to get a good shot, when it's after sunset,
at the right time when the lighting is in balance – just enough twilight behind in
lighting inside the Markthal.
It's so attractive there's a dozen photographers here tonight all with their tripod and serious
cameras getting some shots.
Yeah.
The building has a large glass façade on both sides, made up of smaller glass windows.
All of these are hung around a structure of steel cables, 34 meters high and 42 meters
wide, which makes it the largest glass-window cable structure in Europe.
Its principle is comparable to a tennis racket in which the steel cables are used as strings
in between which the glass is mounted.
Because of this miracle of engineering the art piece inside is visible from the outside,
its lush shapes and colors invite the public to enter the building.
The hall is naturally ventilated.
Underneath the glass façade fresh air flows in, it rises towards the roof and leaves the
hall through ventilation shafts in the roof.
create a comfortable interior climate with an extremely low energy use.
Within the building’s arch structure there are 102 rental apartments and 126 owned apartments,
including 24 penthouses, which have a rooftop deck.
The apartments vary from 80 square meters to 300 square meters, and from two to five
bedrooms.
Every apartment has a view towards either the river or the Laurenskerk, and views into
the market.
Their windows are triple glazed to avoid sound or smell nuisance.
Rooms that require natural lighting, such as living rooms and bedrooms, are situated
on the outside, while kitchens, dining rooms and storage are positioned on the market side,
establishing a connection to the market through windows or a glass floor.
The Markthal is a synergistic combination of food, leisure, and living in which all
functions are fully integrated in this unusually beautiful structure.
By itself, it gives you a reason for visiting Rotterdam, along with the many other attractions
of this exciting city that we will be showing you in our series.
It is the world's most futuristic food market and points to a new direction for urban development
on planet Earth.
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