A Tiny Cube House With a View: Blok’s Block

Looking at the city from a higher point of view can generate some great design ideas. For a cube-shaped tiny house, for example. During the Rotterdam Rooftop Days, in the beginning of June, the Codrico grain silo at Katendrecht once against caught my eye. This national heritage may be the mo st beautiful industrial building in Rotterdam. At its rooftop there is a large cube made of concrete and glass. If the silo complex ever loses its current function, I’d love to make plans for its redevelopment.

Foto vanaf de KPN-toren op de Wilhelminapier met de graansilo van Codrico op Katendrecht met op het dak de fameuze kubus
The grainsilo with the rooftop cube

In the cube one could make a beautiful top end apartment . A very large apartment by the way, since I estimate the cube to be around twelve meters long, wide and high. Four floors would fit in here. Okay, maybe a home for a living group.

Anyway, as far as I know, Codrico is not going to leave anytime soon. So all I can do now is brainstorm about a cube-shaped house on another roof.

Tiny House

A simple calculation teaches that a cube with three floors still results in a fairly large house. And a cube with just one floor, roughly 3 by 3 by 3 meters, would be a tad too tiny. But a two floor cube seems perfect for a kind of plus-size tiny house.

A compact cube-shaped house with a glass and wood facade, located on a high rooftop with a fictional Rotterdam skyline in the background
Tiny cube house with a view

Cube

And so there it was, almost effortlessly: a compact timber frame catalog cube house with a cool industrial look for adventurous city dwellers. Blok’s Block, let me make that joke myself before someone else does it.

Front view of a cube-shaped tiny house on a fictional rooftop in Rotterdam with in the background the skyline including the Euromast
Rooftop house and skyline

Design

The interior design was quite a puzzle, though. On the one hand you want all spaces to benefit as much as possible from the spectacular views, on the other hand you also want some storage space and a few walls to attach things to. And all that in barely 65 square meters.

Eventually this led to a large piece of furniture in the heart of the cube in which all storage, sanitary facilities, stairs, kitchen and laundry room find a place. It’s surrounded by one continuous space that connects the entrance, living and dining area, bedroom and workplace with the view.

Animation with five perspective sections of the cube-shaped tiny house Blok's Block
Sections of the Block

Wood

The Block has a wooden construction, floors, walls and cladding. That is not only because wood fits a Block well, but also because it makes the house so lightweight that most roofs can carry it. Perhaps a prefabricated Block can even be placed on the roof in one go with a large crane.

And furthermore, a Wooden Block also makes a modest contribution to climate targets. A wooden house is in fact CO2 that you can live in.

Animation with two perspective top views of a cube shaped compact house with a wooden construction
Plans of the Block

Target

The municipality of Rotterdam aims to build 50,000 new homes by 2040; comparable numbers are mentioned for the other large cities in the Netherlands. Although roofs are increasingly being used for solar panels, urban agriculture, terraces, installations or other useful functions, there are countless flat roofs where there is still room for a Block. Well, not 50,000 of them probably, but it seems the Block can be helpful to meet at least a small part of those building targets.

A view through the windows of a compact cube-shaped rooftop house, towards living room and sleeping room
Looking into the Block

Challenge

The construction of the Block is likely to be quite straightforward. The major challenges are probably organizational in nature. Will building owners want to give potential Block residents access to their roofs? And under what conditions?

Blocks Block, a compact and sustainable tiny house XL with a breathtaking view of Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The Block on a summer evening

Anyway: even though the Block is a lot smaller my current apartment in the 3Develop Tower, I would move there without hesitation…

Impression of the cube-shaped catalogue rooftop house Blok's Block, seen from below, during the blue hour
Tiny cube house in the blue hour

Update: the Little Block

Officially, the Block can not be called a tiny house because the unofficial limit is 50 m2. That is why I also designed a smaller version, based on one and a half storey height: Blok’s Blokje.

Other house designs: the Green PyramidRumah Kecil

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1 Response

  1. Appel says:

    Wow, I am really into tiny houses lately. I love seeing tiny houses in the nature, but this page gave me a new insite of where tiny houses can be build. As a Rotterdammer I could not think of having tiny house here in the city and if I want to live in one.. I thought I could only move out the city. You gave me new insight of having tiny houses on big buildings! Thanks for this inspiring blog/article!

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