I took this photo of the famous Cubed Houses when I visited Rotterdam, in The Netherlands. I found it interesting and wondered why the architect who designed these houses chose to make them cubic. I did some research and found out that they were built in the 1970s according to the request of the town planners to have housing be built over a pedestrian bridge. The designer, Piet Blom, had already built houses with similar designs in the town of Helmand and wanted to recreate the design in Rotterdam. The peaks of each house is supposed to resemble the tops of trees, so the houses connected together will look like an abstract forest. The windows are angled at 54.7 degrees downward, providing a beautiful view of the city below. I also noticed that the common pathways between the houses are made up of hexagonal tiles, which I think makes it even more of an abstract design. But despite the total area within the house making 100 square meters, the angled structure means that only 25 square meters are usable, making the cubed houses very interesting, but not very practical.
