Nest wall and mushroom bar canopy: Holland Casino Rotterdam

Project Information:

British experts Design & Display Structures called in to design, build and install elaborate features in a casino in Rotterdam have been praised for their workmanship.

Dutch project leaders would have preferred to recruit their own countrymen to interpret ideas for the Holland Casino, Rotterdam, but the level of expertise needed wasn’t available.

Allan Curtis, managing director of Design & Display Structures, was delighted when his company was asked for help. It met stringent demands and is currently putting the finishing touches to another project they are tackling at the casino.

The challenge facing the company, which is based in Uckfield and has a factory at Woolwich, was to build both a giant curving nest wall to separate a restaurant from casino playing areas and an illuminated mushroom-style canopy which spreads upwards and outwards over those areas with a circular bar wrapped around the trunk.

They worked with designers from America, architects from the Netherlands and a design consultant with bases in London and Amsterdam before successfully putting together the nest of 55 individually manufactured ‘sticks’ having carried them safely across a busy cycle lane and footpath, through the main entrance of the working casino, upstairs and round corners to their final destination.

The mushroom canopy too was manufactured in sections and had to be carried along the same tortuous route at a time carefully agreed to coincide with the availability of electricians who were to complete illumination.

The sticks are made of MDF with a walnut veneer and the canopy is made of glass reinforced gypsum (GRG).

Now D & D is putting the finishing touches to casino check-in desks made of glass reinforced plastic (GRP) and fitted out with desks, shelves and cash points.

The work is part of a major €17 million refurbishment project, involving American designers Icrave and Dutch architects Claessens Erdmann, which is due for completion in October.

Design consultant David Chaloner, who worked with the architects on conversion negotiations because Americans use different construction terms to those understood by the English and Dutch, had recommended D & D to make the special features.
He said afterwards: ‘I think their abilities to understand and interpret the requirements of the designers at Icrave were exceptional, second to none. They took extraordinarily complex forms - and their scale was considerable - and turned them into a manageable and indeed transportable solution, capable of being moulded and deconstructed in the UK and reconstructed in the Netherlands.’

Holland Casino project manager Pieter Boers said: ‘It is easier to work with contractors in your own home country. The problem was these products were very specific. When we started we did look in the Netherlands for companies who could build that kind of product but didn’t find any.’

He added D & D did a great job in helping with the design and interpreting it. The project was logistically complex and the time scale short. ‘It was a tight job and they did it so well, very fast, in the time we agreed.’

For more information about Design & Display Structures please contact Allan Curtis on 07718 320184 / 0844 736 5995 or email him at sales@design-and-display.co.uk