‘De Plantage’ residential building

On 13 September 1955 the first pile for ‘De Plantage’ apartment block entered the ground. The honour fell to engineer J. Rutgers, director of the Department of City Development and Reconstruction. He was full of praise for this project, which he saw as a good contribution to solving the city’s biggest problem, the shortage of housing. Director F.W. Lieuwen of the Progress pension fund was, in turn, also full of praise for the involvement of Department. He called the project the flagship of the fund.

The eleven-floor building consists of 44 three-room and 22 four-room apartments. Storage units and garages are located in a separate low-rise volume placed perpendicular to the building. The resulting angled shape frames a shared garden. The bordering dead-end street is called Van Traaplaats; that was a conspicuously modest street to be named in 1980 in honour of the designer of the Basisplan.

The building overlooks the nameless broad strip of greenery that cut through the centre of the new Kralingen. The apartments are oriented towards that green space, with west-facing balconies that are half-recessed. The galleries running along the eastern side overlook the shared garden. The top floor, the eleventh, is recessed slightly on both sides, creating a continuous balcony. The first floor also has a continuous strip of balconies. Originally the building was positioned parallel with Gerdesiaweg, but at the request of the Department of City Development it was realigned parallel to Willem Ruyslaan because of the view, which was blighted in the early years by some gasometers.

The main entrance is located on the south side in a separate low-rise volume that connects with the garages. This volume also contains the main staircase and lifts, which protrude from the building as a glazed element. An escape staircase is located on the northern side. The apartments on the southern facade have extra windows and balconies.

It was the second high-rise building in Kralingen, the first being the Plaslaanflat built just before the war. Plans for high-rise along Kralingerhout took shape a short time later. Both residential buildings were luxuriously appointed, certainly by 1950s standards, and thus blended in well in Kralingen. High-rise was not initially seen as a solution to the housing shortage. There were still no plans to build large-scale high-rise districts, but freestanding tall structures were often deployed as urban landmarks. Such points of urban emphases, which provide points of orientation, appeared in newly developed districts like Pendrecht and in the existing city. The target group consisted of small, mostly childless families, but owing to the housing shortage many families with children ended up in these blocks of flats. The newspapers wrote of the ‘first post-war tower building’, although with eleven floors it would hardly be termed ‘high-rise’ by today’s standards.

W.J. Fiolet (1917-1978) is not a particularly famous name in Rotterdam architecture, but he was one of the most productive architects of the post-war period. He completed numerous housing schemes, commercial buildings and freestanding houses. He designed many smaller projects in Schiebroek and Hillegersberg, as well as the Savoy Hotel and Una Sancta. His most important work was this residential building in Kralingen. Subtle detailing and use of materials characterize his architecture. For example, the prefabricated concrete balcony walls and façade panels and the decorative base, with alternating yellow perforated facing bricks and concrete floor slabs. The block of apartments with commercial spaces on the opposite side of Robert Baeldestraat (numbers 30-64) was also designed by Fiolet during the same period (1954-1956).

The residential building is a municipal monument, and the architecture is still largely intact. The entrance with its glass walls has been closed off, however. The apartments sell easily, with a three-room unit of 77-79 m2 changing hands in late 2020 for around 275,000 euros. In urban design terms the situation has changed drastically. Most of the green strip disappeared in the late 1970s because of development; all that remains in a small green area with a water feature.