Stay in Rotterdam's Crazy Cube Houses?

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed)
Jul 15th 2009 at 4:02PM

Rotterdam is a great city for architectural enthusiasts -- and actually, for enthusiasts of construction, since the city is really proud of its ongoing modern building efforts, which includes a complete redesign of the city's train station. (The city feels like a modern palate-cleanser if you visit after an immersion in Amsterdam's historic canal-lined streets, although some will look at you funny there if you say you're going to Rotterdam. Don't step into the middle of this one, Rotterdam thinks it's way cooler and more creative than Amsterdam.)

One of the most iconic structures in town are the Cube Houses, designed by architect Piet Blom in the late 1970's, built in the mid 1980s, and they definitely capture the feel of that era. The city apparently was considering using the cubes as ex-convict housing, but now, Stayokay is using it as a just-opened youth hostel. So if you want to really go retro, and return to your younger days, you can stay in a cube in a shared room for under 20 euro a night. Personally, I'd visit #70, which is open as a museum, and stay at The Westin.

Tags: amsterdam, architecture, holland, hostel, hostels, rotterdam