ACCESS ALL AREAS

MVRDV’s new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam blows the dust off art storage by welcoming the public at its heart

- YOKO CHOY

On average, most international museums only show six to seven per cent of their collections to the public at any one time. The rest is often offsite and hidden from view, tucked away in closed depots. The new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, designed by architecture firm MVRDV, is bucking this trend, making 99 per cent of its building accessible to the public and its entire collection of some 151,000 artefacts available for viewing.

Technological innovation was key to this bold move, says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas. ‘We put technology on the same level as sociology, ecology and the economy,’ he says. ‘Innovations and achievements in all these aspects are equally important.’ Indeed, the Depot’s ovoid, monolithic appearance belies the most sophisticated engineering. The 39.5m high, bowl-shaped structure is 40m in diameter at the bottom and 60m at the top, and its overhanging part has no direct supports. Additionally, the openings, including the visitors’ entrance, and the entrance and exit for the exhibitions, create weak points on the ground floor. The task, therefore, was to come up with a design in which the lowest (and narrowest) part of the building could withstand the high load from above. The solution lay in the foundations: the first two floors were made from concrete poured in situ, functioning as a structurally solid plinth for the building upon which the remaining four storeys could be constructed.