Fenix
Fenixloods II A home for stories that transcend borders About love and farewell About the search for identity or finding happiness.
What is FENIX?
FENIX will open in 2025. A museum? Yes, and much more. FENIX is a cultural place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, inspired by migration stories from all over the world. About love and farewell, about coming home and feeling at home, about navigating identity or searching for happiness. At the place of departure and arrival.
Through art, culture and flavours, FENIX stimulates your curiosity about the world around you and how it has been shaped by migration. The story of FENIX is the story of Rotterdam. And that of the world. Because migration moves us, always and everywhere.
Discover the theme through the eyes of international artists such as Do Ho Suh, Shilpa Gupta, Bill Viola, Rineke Dijkstra and Omar Victor Diop. In a monumental suitcase maze you wander past personal stories and the exhibition Family of Migrants takes you on a journey past hundreds of iconic documentary photos. Plein is a covered city square of two thousand square meters in FENIX. A lively place that moves with the city.
FENIX is located in a historic harbor warehouse from 1923, with 16,000 m2 once the largest storage and transhipment warehouse in the world. The Chinese MAD Architects breathe new life into the carefully restored heritage with a modern addition. The Tornado is a staircase, work of art and experience in one. From the ground floor of the warehouse, the staircase swirls upwards to a spectacular viewing platform high above the roof.
Right on the Maas, FENIX looks out over the quays from where millions of people left by ship for destinations in the United States and Canada, such as Albert Einstein and Willem de Kooning. Just as many new Rotterdammers arrived here. The first Chinatown in Europe emerged on Katendrecht and Cape Verdean sailors and Surinamese jazz musicians, among others, found their home there. Anyone who climbs the Tornado will soon be treated to a new view of Rotterdam: the super-diverse city, formed by more than 170 nationalities.
