Fruitcake

Fruitcake is a concept by Mothership that offers a surprising and sustainable solution for temporarily vacant buildings in the city — with the former headquarters of the Rotterdamse Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM), located between Heijplaat and the RDM grounds, as its pilot site. The idea: transform a forgotten building into a living, nourishing façade garden filled with fruit trees.

The building, recently stripped down to its bare concrete frame and awaiting a new purpose, stands ready for transformation. Instead of leaving it vacant or boarded up, Fruitcake proposes removing the window glass and installing large planters filled with discarded fruit trees. The result is a vertical orchard: apple trees on the first floor, pears above them, followed by plums — and at the top, quite literally the cherry on the cake — cherry trees.

The fruit trees used are those that have been written off commercially but still bear edible fruit. By giving them a second life, the project not only creates a green and vibrant façade but also helps reduce waste. It enhances the sense of seasonality and invites local residents to share in the harvest each year during so-called “fruit giveaway days.”

Maintenance is organized locally, for instance through a gardening association or landscaper from Heijplaat. In this way, the project remains connected to the neighborhood and grows into something that truly belongs to the community itself.

Fruitcake is a bold, sustainable, and publicly engaging proposal that supports Rotterdam’s greening policy, fosters social cohesion, and generates media attention. In this way, a vacant building is temporarily transformed into a flourishing icon of circularity, urban agriculture, and imagination.