Seven rounded volumes covered with terraces, planting pockets, and openings will rise beside the Maas under MVRDV’s winning design for Rotterdam’s Shift Embassy.
The Dutch architecture studio has won the international competition to design the 25,000m² cultural and mixed-use destination for Shift, a social enterprise seeking to encourage ecological and societal change. Named Rotterdam ROCKS!, the vertical riverside complex will contain an immersive exhibition, a 200-room hotel, hospitality spaces, conference facilities, and public routes.
The building’s spaces will be spread across seven stacked, rock-like volumes. Visitors will move through internal “caves” and climb planted terraces overlooking the river. Niches in the building’s outer skin will hold soil, water, vegetation, and habitats for animals. Much of the building will be accessible to the public.
Inside MVRDV’s winning design
Two interconnected towers form the basis of the scheme. One will primarily contain the exhibition experience, while the other will house the hospitality programme. Dividing the towers into seven rounded volumes creates terraces, overhangs, daylight-filled openings, and sheltered spaces between them.
A central cave runs through each rock, linked by stairs, ramps, lifts, galleries, and terraces. Two main routes will serve the exhibition and hospitality areas. A third path will wind around the exterior to a publicly accessible viewing terrace. Visitors to the exhibition will have access to another terrace on the roof.
Visitors will pass from enclosed caverns onto outdoor terraces, with views across the Maas and Rotterdam. Cafés, restaurants, viewing platforms, planted areas, water features, and gathering places will line the exterior route.
The largest cultural component, The Elysium, will occupy 5,000m². Its immersive art, stories, and practical examples will explore possible responses to issues concerning nature, energy, travel, and circularity.
Shift intends the wider embassy to combine art, architecture, community building, storytelling, and examples of sustainable living and business practices. The building will also contain education spaces, venues for business events and community gatherings, a food court, a restaurant, and an observation deck.
Planted terraces extend Rotterdam’s tidal park
Rotterdam ROCKS! is planned for Waterkant, a new district on the southern bank of the river. The wider development is set to include 3,750 homes, schools, maker spaces, an urban sports campus, a railway station, offices, restaurants, and cultural facilities. The Shift Embassy site is close to the landing point of Rotterdam’s proposed third city bridge.
The planted terraces will extend the riverside tidal park vertically, carrying landscape and public paths up the building.
The rounded forms will create areas with varying levels of sun, shade, wind, shelter, and exposure, which will guide the placement of planting, water systems, nesting areas, balconies, and viewpoints.
Flat terraces will accommodate shrubs and taller plants. Sloping and vertical areas will contain planting pockets, while overhangs will support hanging vegetation and provide shelter for birds and bats. Pockmarks, channels, and niches across the envelope will retain and filter water, accommodate roots and soil, and provide habitats for animals.
Visitors will be able to follow the performance of the building’s environmental systems. A central display will present live data on energy production and consumption, water cycles, biodiversity, vegetation, temperature, maintenance, and materials.
Rotterdam ROCKS! will also test construction methods and environmental technologies that can be updated as regulations and knowledge change. New systems and research projects could be installed, monitored, replaced, or improved during the building’s lifetime.
During construction, the team will publicly document which low-carbon strategies succeed, which do not, and which help minimise the project’s ecological impact. The project is intended to help advance sustainable building practices across the industry.
MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas said the practice expanded the brief to consider space for people alongside trees, plants, water, air, and animal habitats. Maas said the compact, porous form was developed to provide new floor space while making room for landscape and habitats.
MVRDV chosen from 80 international competition entries
The Shift International Architecture Competition opened in January 2025 and received 80 proposals from multidisciplinary teams of architects, engineers, artists, scientists, ecologists, and other specialists.
Five architecture and design teams reached the final stage: Ecosistema Urbano, Heatherwick Studio, Mecanoo, MVRDV, and Office for Political Innovation. They presented their proposals in early March 2026.
Following a verification process involving the jury’s two highest-ranked teams, Shift selected MVRDV. The winning team also includes project collaborators Arup, Arcadis, DGMR, SB&Co, and Joris Laarman Lab.
The team entered a short pre-design phase in June, during which it revised the scheme. The updated Rotterdam ROCKS! proposal has now been unveiled ahead of a local participation process planned for autumn 2026.
