a one-storey topping out

The Tinbergen Building at Erasmus University Rotterdam is being renovated and refurbished. The twenty-storey tower gains an extra floor, placed on top of the existing concrete like a light glass crown. So not just any topping out, which took place last Tuesday.

glass crown
The Tinbergen Building on Campus Woudestein is a municipal monument from 1970, designed by Cornelis Elffers. It consists of an ingenious three-storey base supporting a tower that rises high above the city. Typical post-war reconstruction architecture, with precast concrete façade panels and narrow, horizontal window strips. For the new top floor, cepezed chose contrast: a fully glazed façade. A very slim roof edge accentuates the expanse of glass, as do the load-bearing columns that stand slightly clear of the façade.

extra space
The extra space will house meeting rooms, a restaurant and the Faculty Club of the Erasmus School of Economics, which occupies the Tinbergen Building. The original top floor remains dedicated to building services, though these have been completely renewed. A new staircase connects the crown, floor 19, with the existing conference centre on the seventeenth floor. A strip of rooflights sits above the stairs. The interior of the tower has been renovated on every floor, with several floors partly reconfigured.

contemporary optimism
The interior of the new, nineteenth floor draws on Elffers' original design. The wooden slatted ceiling echoes the slats in the lift halls, and the natural stone flooring also appears on the first two levels, in the base structure. Facilities such as the kitchen, bar, cloakroom and toilets are contained within aluminium volumes: black in the restaurant, silver in the meeting rooms. Where the tower once exuded that distinctly Rotterdam post-war atmosphere, the new, light crown adds a sense of contemporary optimism.

We are working on Tinbergen together with Erasmus University Rotterdam, cepezedinterieur, IMD Raadgevende ingenieurs (structures), Nelissen ingenieursbureau (services), DGMR (building physics & sustainability), Ryse (project management) and Berghege Heerkens bouwgroep. Completion is scheduled for mid-2027.

→read more about the Tinbergen building