The Markthal was designed by architectural firmMVRDV. The greynature stone building has an archwise structure like a horseshoe. The building has a glass facade on both sides, these are made up of smaller glass windows. The smaller windows are mostly squared and around 1485 millimeters wide. All of these are hung around a structure of steel cables, 34 metres high and 42 metres wide, which makes it the largest glass-window cable structure in Europe. Each facade has 26 vertical and 22 horizontal cables. The facade was designed and installed by Octatube s.
Artwork
The inside of the building is adorned with an 11.000 m2 artwork by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam, named Hoorn des Overvloeds. The artwork shows strongly enlarged fruits, vegetables, seeds, fish, flowers and insects. The artwork was selected out of 9 international candidates. The work was made using digital 3D-techniques. This enormous file of 1,47 terabytes needed special servers, which are also used by Pixar Studios for making animated movies. The digital 3D-animation was separated in 4000 pieces and then printed on perforated aluminum panels. The 4000 aluminum panels are now on the inside of the hall. Right after the opening in 2014, the artwork got a lot of attention from around the world. Some called it The largest artwork in the world or The Sistine Chapel of Rotterdam.
Archaeological site
The Markthal is built on top of a fourteenth-century buried village in the Polder of Westnieuwland. This polder was surrounded by water and dykes to protect the polder during high-tide. There were a few houses and farms in this polder, also at the site of the Markthal. During the building of the Markthal, a tenth-century farm was found 7 metres under the ground. Within the house were two stoves and a few fireplaces. The farm was part of a village before Rotterdam, named Rotta, after the riverRotte. The inhabitants of Rotta were farmers, craftsmen and traders. Earlier, a small settlement from the fourteenth-century was found on the site. Several foundations on the site are now exhibited next to the central staircases underneath the Markthal.
Trivia
The 4-storey parking garage of the Markthal is the largest in the center of Rotterdam.
The Markthal was one of the first buildings in the world that could be seen by augmented reality. By using the application UAR, made by the NAi, users could see 3D-models of the building, and how it was going to look.
A possible nickname of the Markthal is Koopboog. This name is a reference to the horseshoe shape of the hall and also refers to the nearby Koopgoot.
