Architecture · Adaptive reuse · Rotterdam
Buildings that earn their place.
We keep what is worth keeping and design the rest with the same care — civic, cultural and housing work across the Netherlands and Belgium.
Established
2011 · Rotterdam
Completed
41 buildings
Registration
BNA · reg. 1.130419.007
Recognition
18 awards & nominations
Selected clients
Demolition is a decision, not a default. We start every commission by pricing what it costs to keep the building — in euros and in tonnes — and we have been right often enough that thirty-one of our forty-one completed projects kept the structure they started with.
The rest of the work is unglamorous: floor-to-floor sections, materials audits, and the long negotiation that turns a drawing into a building on budget. We do that part in-house.
Selected work
All projects
Nine buildings, one argument.
The record
41
Buildings completed
Since the practice opened in 2011
31
Kept, not demolished
Of those 41, structure retained
1,900 t
CO₂e avoided
On Kade 14 alone
94%
Delivered on budget
Across the last five years
How we work
Services in detail
Three ways to appoint us.
01
Feasibility & Reuse Studies
Six weeks, three documents, and a straight answer on whether the building you have is the building you should keep. We price demolition against retention in euros and in tonnes before anyone draws anything.
Structural survey · Floor-to-floor section · Materials audit · Comparative cost and carbon model
02
Full Architectural Services
Concept through completion, RIBA stages 1–6 equivalent. One partner stays on the project from the first sketch to the final snag list — we do not hand projects down the office.
Design development · Planning submission · Tender documentation · Site administration
03
Technical Delivery & Consultancy
Where another practice holds the design, we take the envelope, structure interface and specification through to construction. Common on housing and listed-fabric work.
Technical design · Specification · Contractor liaison · Handover manual
Process
Five stages, no surprises.
Every project runs the same way. The timings below are the ranges we quote, and we publish them so you can hold us to them.
01
Survey
Two to six weeks
We measure what is there. Structural capacity, floor-to-floor heights, contamination, and the materials audit that tells you what the building is worth as a building.
02
Position
Two weeks
One idea, argued on paper, with the cost and carbon case attached. If retention does not stand up, we say so here rather than at stage four.
03
Design
Twelve to twenty weeks
Drawings and one large physical model that stays on the table until handover. Planning submission at the end of this stage.
04
Deliver
Nine to thirty months
Tender, contract and site. The partner who drew it attends site. Nothing is delegated to someone who has not been in the room.
05
Hand over
Two weeks
An eight-page building manual: what was deliberate, what is expendable, and how to maintain it without us.
Two consultants told us to knock it down. Rawform spent six weeks proving otherwise and then delivered the thing 31% under the demolition estimate. The stair they cut through the middle is now the reason tenants take the lease.
Hanneke Vermeulen
Head of Asset Development, Havenbedrijf Rotterdam · Kade 14
Journal
All notes
Notes from the drawing table.
Start a project
Tell us what is already on the site.
Send us the address and the brief. You will get a written response within two working days, and a fee proposal within ten — or we will tell you plainly that we are not the right practice for it.