I take my quest to visit all Dutch UNESCO sites by the end of this year very seriously. So during  a sunny weekend in August I decided it was time to visit the one closest to my home, the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam. It’s a building where aesthetics don’t really count, and where it’s all about functionality. If you’re wondering what Dutch efficiency looks like in a building, keep reading!

Tour

The only way to visit this UNESCO site for now is by booking a tour with Urban Guides. On the site it says the duration of the tour is 60 minutes, but our tour lasted a bit longer. I like it when a tour guide is so passionate about a subject that he chooses the enjoyment of the tour group over sticking to the allotted time. If you’re interested, it’s best to book beforehand to avoid being turned away because of a full group.

History of the Van Nelle Factory

People outside the Netherlands might not know the brand, but here Van Nelle is still a household name. I actually didn’t  know it was until the tour guide pointed out these cigarette packs. I recognized the design straigthaway.

Also the lettering on the packages and on the building are immediately recognizable as being the Van Nelle brand.

Why I’m mentioning this instead of starting with a short history lesson about Van Nelle is because operations stopped around 1996. So this brand is lingering in our collective minds for a long time after it stopped existing.

Now that we’ve got that out of te way it’s time for the short history lesson. Van Nelle processed coffee, tea and tobacco. The factory was built between 1925 and 1931. It’s one of the first buildings in the Netherlands built in the style of Nieuwe Bouwen, modern architecture. The company directors were so impressed with the style, they asked the architects to build their houses in the same style. Only one of these houses is accessible to the public, namely the Sonneveld House. I haven’t been yet, but if you like this style it’s worth checking it out! It’s all in the same city!

The factory became a UNESCO Heritage listed site as recently as 2015. It’s slightly special in the magic world of UNESCO sites in that it’s the only privately owned site in the world, most other sites are in the hands of governments or foundations.

Exterior of the Building

The Urban Guides website calls the Van Nelle factory a ‘glass palace’. There’s no better name I could think of when looking at this building from the outside. The numerous windows make the factory look beautiful and open.

One of the things you can see on the ouside is how many production processes were required to create the end products. First of all, every building of the factory had a different function, one was for tea, one for coffee and one for tobacco. Secondly, the amount of floors in the building represented the different production processes.

The raw product would start at the top floor of the building and work its way down until it was ready to be shipped. The tubes you see running from one building to the next was solely for transportation of the products.

The only tunnel a person could walk through was the one for Quality Assurance. This way the person responsible for the quality of the production process and the end product would be able to oversee everything without being overcome by too many smells at the same time.

Bringing the Outside to the Inside

Enough about the outside for now, let’s turn our attention to the inside where the architects tried to get as much light in as possible. This  resulted in a better working environment for the employees and therefore happier employees. I’ve not seen many factories where plants are able to grow, but they managed that here. In the below photo you see women weighing the products, and next to them you’ll see the decorative plants.

The architects achieved this by building the huge windows, but also by optimizing everything inside the building to ensure nothing would block the light. For example, the production line was inspired by Henry Ford’s production line, but it was hung from the ceiling so it wouldn’t block as much light as when it would be positioned on the floor.

All these windows are nice, but in summer a building made completely out of glass can get pretty hot. That’s why all the windows opened in a way the wind wouldn’t affect them too much and fresh air would always be able to flow in.

Interior Design

Nowadays, the interior of the building doesn’t look like a factory in the slightest. The whole building has been repurposed. There are offices, meeting rooms and social venues now. However, the reason the building is actually so special still is because a lot of the old design has remained intact. The architects wanted the building to be repurposed if necessary with as much ease as possible. This makes  the building sustainable even today. They achieved this for example by drilling a lot of holes into the ceiling so at a later date new holes wouldn’t need to be drilled. They added slots to the pillars, so that new walls could be put in within a matter of hours.

In the picture above you can see the slots, but you can also see a little nook on the first floor. Even though the building is repurposed there are still remnants of the old building around. The reason for the nook is so that supervisors would be able to look through the glass into the bathroom. Cleanliness was Van Nelle’s main focus when it came to their employees. Supervisors would check if people washed their hands after doing their business on the toilet.

Also, in the 1930s people rarely washed themselves at homes. Van Nelle wanted their employees to shower every day at work, so what they did to make this process as efficient as possible was by creating two staircases. One for men and one for women. This staircase would lead into the bathrooms and then into the work area. This way people would be washed and ready to start.

There’s so much more I could tell you about this factory. Even though it lacks the looks of an actual factory every door, radiator, staircase, lamp has its design story.

If you’re intersted in interior or architectural design, you’ll love this factory!

View

If you’re not interested in neither interior nor architectural design, you might be interested by the gorgeous view from the top of the building. From there, you can see Rotterdam, Delft and The Hague. It’s worth climbing up the stairs (or taking the super tiny elavator) to take in this lovely view.

Conclusion

I didn’t expect to love this site as much as I did. The whole time I was waiting to walk into a production line or some other big remnant of the factory, like in the Völklinger Hütte. However, the beauty of the Van Nelle factory is in the small things. It was only after I left the factory that I started to appreciate everything I saw. It’s a great site, and it’s definitely worth checking out!