I felt like Rem. Architectural legend has it that when Koolhaas went to open OMA's Seattle Central Library in 2004, after walking a few times around the building, he had to call the office to find out where to get in. Here I was in the dark, wind and rain at Rotterdam's latest bulky building on its opening night, now late for the tour I had arrived early for. The four green celebratory light beams directed across the city at the new Timmerhuis -a building of municipal offices, a museum, retail and 84 apartments - couldn't even help me. It is an obscure site for a €100 million gateway project: wedged between a dirty stretch of canal and a similarly unattractive service road to the back of the city hall and Post Office - the only surviving pre-war relics (and with that their architectural focus on frontage) in a city centre completely destroyed by bombing. I lived in the city for nearly a year without really knowing where Timmerhuis was happening and catching glimpses only a handful of times by mistake.
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