Rotterdam Photo Gallery - Cube House

Oddly intriguing from the outside, the Cube House is a set of residential buildings made of cubes angled at 53.5 degrees resting on concrete pillar trunks. Designed by Piet Blom, they first appeared in the mid-1970s near Eindhoven and arrived in Rotterdam in the 1980s. This "forest" of treehouses are placed on top of a busy avenue below, connecting the new housing projects in the Old Harbour with the city. A typical apartment consists of 3 floors. The lower floor consists of the living space with kitchen with downward-facing windows that interact with the street below. Heading up the narrow and steep staircase, you reach the second floor, where there are bedrooms and a toilet. The top floor is a pyramid with plenty of windows that look out onto your neighbours' roofs, and can be flexibly adapted into a lounge or bedroom. It is possible to enter an apartment museum for 3 euros, a price that hasn't changed over the years. First impressions are not good as it feels claustrophobic to climb up the narrow and steep staircase to the lower floor. It also feels very dark due to the windows' angle downwards. Things don't get better upstairs with sharp corners and low ceilings. It's very easy to bump your head due to the irregular layout inside the inverted cube. The final staircase leads to a super hot greenhouse because all the windows face the sun and there are plenty of them. Natural lighting is not an issue here but it is darker than usual on the other 2 floors where you spend most of the time despite it being a sunny day outside.