On Rotterdam’s dockside, MAD’s gleaming Tornado stirs the skyline

Twisting up from a former shipping warehouse, there is no doubt that MAD Architects’ gleaming steel Tornado makes for an intriguing addition to Rotterdam’s city harbour.

The double helix staircase lunges around a lift core, sweeping up to a 30m-high viewing platform. Approaching from the north, it reflects and distorts the sunlight, building beneath and city behind. It’s entrancing, hypnotic even, and ensures Rotterdam’s new museum of migration, Fenix, is a landmark to remember.

The striking intervention bucks the trend of Western architects building big in Asia. The Chinese studio’s first cultural commission in Europe exports its distinctive curving megaforms into a historic – and unmistakably Dutch – context. To some, the Tornado may appear out of place. However, for this project, that’s quite apt.

Migration of millions

Katendrecht, a peninsula in the city’s old port district, is a meaningful home for the museum. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries the area facilitated the movement of millions of people and cargo across the globe and birthed mainland Europe’s first Chinatown.

Fenix occupies a warehouse built for the Holland-America shipping line in 1923 which faces the ‘Pier of Tears’, named after the many farewells it witnessed. Crouching low at only two stories tall, the reinforced concrete structure was originally more than 360m long, but was separated into two shorter blocks following a fire in the 1950s.

In 2018, the building was acquired by the Droom en Daad Foundation, an organisation which invests in and develops arts and culture in Rotterdam, for the museum. Fenix was conceived as a place to explore stories of migration through art, food and personal objects and to connect with communities.

Although it attends to its immediate context, the museum’s scope is universal. “As long as we exist as humans, we will move,” reflects Fenix director Anna Kremer.

Local firm Bureau Polderman was invited to renovate the 16,000m² warehouse, and MAD Architects to design a new central staircase. “The Tornado is all about the future… but it’s rooted in the past,” explains MAD Architects founder and principal partner Ma Yansong. “For me, it’s a metaphor for the journeys of migrants who passed through this building.” 

The intervention offers a meandering and disorientating ascension through the structure; from the entrance foyer, past first-floor exhibition spaces and up through a new glass roof. It comprises two timber staircases, clad in 297 stainless-steel panels, which wind around and past one another and enable different routes to be taken.

While circulating, warped reflections of yourself, others and the Tornado itself flash in and out of view. Light streams down from above, casting shadows and refracting shimmers across surfaces. The experience is surreal, uncertain, yet also exciting. Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the stabilising effect of the dark timber planks underfoot.

Transformative focal point injects spontaneity and lightness

At roof level, the glass canopy gathers slightly in two places to allow the Tornado to continue outside. Emerging from the building, the staircases curve and rise, revealing 360° views across the River Maas and city. It’s easy to imagine people taking contorted selfies in the shiny surfaces, snapping the view and kids racing up the different routes. The intervention is as much an attraction as it is a mode of circulation or experiential sculpture – which is no bad thing for visitor numbers.

The Tornado is undeniably ostentatious, but also architecturally transformative and purposeful. It creates a much needed focal point in a building which has been damaged, chopped up and reconfigured over more than a century.

It also introduces verticality, spontaneity, and lightness to the existing space, without negating its overall industrial character. Although the Tornado is distinctly separate from the restored exhibition spaces, large pivoting glass doors ensure they are always seen from and through one another.

Crucially, much to Bureau Polderman’s credit, these original spaces don’t tussle for attention, but modestly make way for artwork on display and MAD Architects' staircase. Concrete columns and coffers have been lightly repaired, keeping alterations and wear visible and a soft, neutral palette throughout. Overall, there’s a pleasing rhythm to the project, which has lulls and crescendos, regularity and unpredictability – in the right doses.

The technical complexity behind the seemingly floating form cannot be overstated. What was once a freehand sketch by Yansong has been realised as a 550m-long space frame which subtly connects to and is supported by a new steel skeleton and lift core.

This setup was tested in a flight simulator to ensure it could accommodate 5cm of movement, in anticipation of people walking on it, wind impact and original foundations shifting. Construction involved arranging a dizzying 12,500 oiled wooden planks, of mostly unique sizes, and over 30,000 hours of hand polishing steel panels to achieve the highly reflective finish.

Ultimately, the Tornado is a spectacle – but deliberately so. The Droom en Daad Foundation aims to supercharge Rotterdam’s cultural offering and chose an international firm, known for bold and futuristic designs, for that very purpose. The Tornado has captured global attention and even contributed to Yansong being named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025.

Would it be as successful if exported to other contexts, such as whipping out of the V&A, amid the architectural grandeur and density of South Kensington? It’s unlikely. Fenix is part of the wider redevelopment of Rotterdam’s city harbour, but is undeniably the centrepiece.

At a time when migration is increasingly politicised, Fenix and its Tornado do not cower. They rise boldly from the ashes of a semi-derelict space to share stories of love, loss, hope, movement – and what it is to be human.

Key data – Fenix:
Site area 8000m²
GIA 16,000m²
Facade length 172m
Green roof 6,750m²

Key data – Tornado:
Length 550m
Height 30m
Wooden planks 12,500
Polished steel 4,000m²