Situated among the cafés and clothing stores of Meent, NIO House Rotterdam uses moving elements to take full advantage of its location in a corner unit alongside a canal. While the main façade onto the street provides a showcase for the company’s cars, the side façade can be opened thanks to sliding windows and the café bar inside can be extended through these open windows to create a canal-side outdoor café on sunny days. Meanwhile, the most prominent corner makes space for a “hero view” of one of the cars, with the wall behind it providing a backdrop of artworks.

Raw, exposed concrete columns and ruggedly engineered details provide touches of Rotterdam character to accentuate the pure and minimalist NIO vision. At the heart of the space is a long communal “crane table” where visitors can drink their coffee, chat with others, and work on their laptops. Suspended on pulleys, this table is easily lifted out of the way to make a forum space, while movable partitions can also slide into place to define a space for presentations, workshops, and lectures.