1 MVRDV - Mono.Kultur

MONO.KULTUR #18
MVRDV:
ON STATICS AND STATISTICS
“We see the Earth changing,
we monitor its development,
and we react.”
AUTUMN 2008 D €3 / E U €4 / U K £3 / W W €5
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MONO.KULTUR #18
MVRDV
MVRDV:
ON STATICS AND STATISTICS
“We see the Earth changing,
we monitor its development,
and we react.”
In 1997, the architecture and design
world saw in MVRDV’s Villa VPRO
evidence of a sea change washing over
the profession. At this moment, when
the height of building design was
dominated by tired, over-rehearsed
variations of modernism (Norwegian
modernist Sverre Fehn took the
Pritzker Prize that year, the architectural equivalent of the Nobel), and
architecture theory was flung far into
the depths of post-structuralist rhetoric, MVRDV opened a view into the
future of architecture that was both
smart and sexy. The Villa, new accommodations for Dutch media broadcasting company VPRO, was tight,
photogenic and an instant success
with architecture students around the
world. VPRO, known for its offbeat,
pseudo-anarchic programming, had
its architectural incarnation in
MVRDV’s design. Reviewers lauded
the building’s various accomplishments: its balance of dynamism with
clarity of form, its stylish references
to the constructed Dutch landscapes,
its open-ecology office that encouraged
the cross-pollination of ideas between
workers. In Villa VPRO, people saw
form as an active animator in the
building’s function. Its curves, twists
and slices provided what looked to be
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an exciting element of danger. The
building’s floors, which ramped up and
flipped down, appeared to echo Claude
Parent and Paul Virilio’s revolutionary
call for architecture to challenge the
comforts of horizontality and ‘destroy
the monopoly of the orthogonal.’
But where Parent and Virilio sought
to be revolutionary, MVRDV employs
irony and subversion. Their now
instantly recognizable WoZoCo apartments for the elderly in AmsterdamOsdorp (1997) similarly use this
strategy. With only 87 of the proposed
100 living units fitting within the
regulations of Cornelius van Eesteren’s
1934 building codes, which ensure that
adequate sunlight and green space
surround new buildings, MVRDV
hung the remaining 13 units off of the
north façade of the structure – projecting entire apartments implausibly
from the main structure like a chest
of drawers opened to the hilt. MVRDV
appropriated the antiquated building codes, retooling their logic of
constraint and conformity into guidelines for innovation.
The processing of codes, data and
information makes up a significant
portion of MVRDV’s output. Since
the 1990s, the firm’s principals, Winy
Maas (1959), Jacob van Rijs (1964) and
Nathalie de Vries (1965) – MVRDV is
an acronym of their surnames – have
been engaged in theoretical research
both in the office and in collaboration
with academic and civic institutions.
Pig City (2000–01), based on data
collected by Wageningen University,
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is a proposition to construct 40-storey
towers fitted with a Taylorist, selfsufficient robotic rearing system that
feeds, cleans, houses and butchers the
animals during the 180 days of their
lifespan. In 1999, the number of inhabitants in the Netherlands equalled
the number of pigs; and if each pig
requires 1,726 square meters of land
including space for feeding, processing
and food storage, 75% of the country’s
area could eventually be taken over
by pork production. Stacking the farms
into towers meant that pigs would
not be competing with humans for a
larger footprint in such a densely
populated country. ‘With data, we can
do everything,’ Maas explained to me
the morning we met. To some, including right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn
(whose murder by an animal rights
activist was linked to his endorsement
of the project), Pig City was a visionary path to a viable future. Others saw
it as a measure of how desperate the
situation of our ecology has become,
how uncertain our future seems if the
only solutions remain deep within the
realm of fantasy. Of course, there was
never a real threat of the Netherlands
being converted into a sprawl of
pigsties: many farmers converted to
fish farming or simply moved their
operations to Denmark or Poland as
developers began competing for more
land. As architects, what MVRDV
constructed in Pig City was not a building per se, but a platform from which
to discursively appraise our footing
and coordinate a strategy to proceed.
Though we shouldn’t forget that the
platform afforded by high-rise farming, so to speak, is built upon the very
socio-economic structures of limitless
consumption that gives us pause in the
first place.
Herein lies the difficulty of identifying MVRDV’s architectural partisanship: the firm is too accepting of the
mainstream techno-messianic rhetoric to be critics, and too pragmatic
and instrumental in their designs to
be proper visionaries. Behind their
somewhat corporate, acronymic name
(think IBM, AT&T, HSBC) lies not a
univocal brand concept, but a fluid
arrangement of parallel, intersecting,
colliding and discrepant ideas. This
split character remains, despite past
journalistic attempts to amalgamate
MVRDV’s divergent and contradictory
nature. One of the firm’s most comprehensive interviews for their 2003
El Croquis monograph was published
with the three principals melded into
a single voice in response to interview
questions.
The problem with this apparent
unanimity is not merely a question
of accuracy or authenticity, which it
is, but it furthermore disallows the
reading of the very complexities and
divergences that make the firm really
fascinating. MVDRV has three drivers, not one, behind the steering wheel,
and when I went to their office to meet
with van Rijs and de Vries, I arrived
at a very different MVRDV than what
Maas had presented to me a few weeks
earlier in Berlin.
One way to think about this split
identity in MVRDV’s work is to
MVRDV
understand their projects, both built
and unbuilt, visionary and traditional,
as moments in a continuous multimedia dialogue. By theorizing the
possibility of cities that ‘know no given
topography, no prescribed ideology,
no representation, (and) no context,’
Metacity/Datatown (1998), one of
MVRDV’s earliest research projects,
cleared the field for later projects by
questioning established architectural
axioms through formalizing the spatial
implications of the information age.
The city, as pure data, was able to take
on previously unimaginable forms. In
one instance, leafy Karst peaks reach
into the sky, their height determined by
the type and amount of data they represented. In another, the city surface was
multiplied by stacking ground planes
on top of one another in an endless pile
– the underside of one plane serving
as the artificially lit fluorescent sky of
the plane below. It was no surprise that
MVRDV’s Dutch Pavilion for the Expo
2000, a commission they received while
producing the research for Metacity /
Datatown, was quite literally a series
of stacked ecologies. At each level, the
visitor arrived at a different Dutch
landscape: dune, greenhouse, forest,
water and polder. The fluorescent sky
from Metacity/Datatown reappears
here, illuminating the fourth-floor
forest. The structure was topped with
windmills. Stripped of a façade, its
layered contents were exposed like a
club sandwich – altogether presenting a strikingly un-nostalgic vision
of the Dutch landscape. Layered
programming became somewhat of
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a popular meme for the office. Their
2000 competition entry for the Oslo
opera house took the shape of a gigantic stack of dominoes that not only
contained the opera’s several theatres,
but supported a number of unlikely
mid-air pine forests. The following
year, MVRDV submitted a design that
would replace the warren of long,
tight corridors and meager offices at
The Hague’s Ministry for Agriculture
with a series of stacked glass houses,
each containing several stories of
offices flanked by an indoor park.
This conversation among theoretical
projects, built work and competition
entries about the potential of ecological densification through stacking
culminated in the 3D City_Cube project
(2005) developed through the Berlage
Institute in Rotterdam. Dispelling the
limits of budget while maintaining a
strict adherence to real life facts and
figures, the aim of the study was to
test the possibility of a self-sustaining
59 km3 volume that would house one
million people. Like Hans Haacke’s
Condensation Cube (1965), an image of
which is on the inside cover of an early
MVRDV publication, the City_Cube is
an illustration of the reciprocal action
of biological and physical systems.
With each edge of the cube city spanning five kilometers, the structure
is organized in synthesized sectors
that radically change the way we use
our space: while 44.81% of the cube
is forest, only 1.03% is reserved for
housing and offices. If the total surface
of the Earth were to be covered by
these city cubes, each with a footprint
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of 25 km2, MVRDV concluded that
the Earth can actually support 5,100
billion people. That would be, mindbogglingly, 850 times larger than our
current global population.
Volumes have been devoted to the presentation of the firm’s designs, theories, collaborations, studies, exhibitions
and teaching, not to mention the nine
books that have been produced under
the MVRDV name. Though their recent
collaboration with Brad Pitt’s Make
It Right Foundation to rebuild the
Katrina-devastated Lower Ninth Ward
of New Orleans found them once again
in the media spotlight, some of their
latest projects languish as the recycled
gestures of past successes. What of
this architectural sea change that we
witnessed with Villa VPRO in 1997?
Torre Huerta (2010), a residential
tower in Valencia, Spain, flaunts the
same projectile garden balconies made
famous by Pig City. The CCA building
(2006) in Amsterdam looks essentially
the same as their design for Container
City (2002). Their housing projects,
Mirador (2004, Madrid), Parkrand
(2006, Rotterdam) and Celosia (under
construction, Madrid), all feature the
same cut out façades. Ours is a culture
of newness, and despite efforts to grow
deeper, more profound, oftentimes if
you’re not the next best thing, you’re
not rewarded with careful attention.
What we gain in pondering MVRDV
is insight into the richness of a practice
that is embedded as much in reality as
it is in the theoretical dimensions of
the virtual – a position many of us find
ourselves straddling as our own lives
negotiate between the anxieties of a
warring world and the vast frontiers
of cyberspace.
MVRDV
Winy Maas
What did you talk about at your lecture
at the University of Arts in Berlin last
night?
M I spoke about how to change, evolution; about how to be curious and how
to work with curiosity. What I highly
appreciate is the desire for newness in
today’s culture – a desire that is counter
to the current trends in urbanism architecture in the US and Europe – which is
basically about cowardliness, protectionism and fear. Fear to invest in new
developments, in progress. It’s about
‘re-’. The talk was about forbidding ‘re’.
Re-new, re-development, re-novate.
Having said that, how does one develop
curiosity and how can an office like ours
work on that? How can we innovate?
Innovation is very personal; it is always
a personal innovation. For instance, in
KM3 we expelled everything until there
was nothing left – like emptying out
yourself, like your stomach does with
food. We have to recuperate now – there
are seeds of elements in that kind of
research. You find out things that you
couldn’t do in that research. Or you find
conclusions that lack information; you
come to an idea for a next step. To see a
hypothesis through to the end – and by
doing that, it reveals the weaknesses.
This is a classic method in science, and I
think we lack this process in architecture.
It seems like MVRDV operates simultaneously in two modes: Much of your
work combines curiosity and improbability with rational, objective data.
Are there conflicting forces at play?
M Well, these forces confirm each
other. I can explain how curiosity and
data are connected. You cannot be
curious if you’re uninformed. One needs
to know where it comes from. We’re
explicit in our designs, in the material
that we have
collected or the
research we have
done, and we
translate them
into words or data.
This information
becomes a layer
that we can use
as a base to build
from, to go beyond
data and start
designing, start
being curious.
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ON DATA [11.01%]
Where did your fascination with data
begin?
M I’m part of a generation that was
confronted by architects and thinkers
that were dealing with chaos theory,
which is scientific, and deconstruction, which is literary. The context for
architectural thinking in the 1980s was
so outside of architecture; the ground
was unfamiliar to me, I couldn’t feel the
foundation. Architecture became something textual, verbal. Thinking through
data was a way for me to answer some
of those questions.
So you saw numerical data as a
foundation for design.
M Statistical data was used initially as
a form of illustration, and second as
a tool to make architectural information
understandable to other people that
surround the profession. With a common
language, all of a sudden you can share
information with a wider group of actors,
generate new actions and reactions,
develop new techniques to connect
outside of architecture’s philosophical domain. Communication is always
a question of translation – and of
persuasion.
There is an economy of expression in
communicating with numbers; in fact,
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numbers make up
the language of
economics. It’s
almost as if you’re
utilizing the ethics and methods of the
system you want to critique.
JACOB VAN RIJS
NATHALIE DE VRIES
M One can say that this is an infiltration act. I think that’s needed. Every
office has a different tactic and this is
our position. We would like to engage
ourselves with all these domains that
seem to attack architecture. By simply
absorbing them, by being a part of
them, we hope to develop architecture towards a more collective practice where we find ourselves in active
discussion with economists and game
designers.
VR They tend to stay around in the
office a long time.
Game designers?
M Game designers these days create
more beautiful cities than architects.
We should put whole cities, urban and
architectural knowledge, into games –
which are evolutionary systems. We
should be a part of this, use this knowledge and not be scared of it.
You used the word beautiful just now.
What does that mean?
building and the surreal stacking of
landscapes in the Dutch Pavilion for
Walking through your office, I see a lot of
blue foam models.
Some of these are from fifteen years
ago! Your models are formally extremely
alluring. Yet, MVRDV has univocally
denied having any formalist desires
several times in the past. Why not just
embrace your love for making beautiful things – the formalist drive in your
practice?
VR A formalist is someone who looks
purely at form. We’re more of a laboratory. When we make architecture, there
are definitely formal qualities in the
work, but that doesn’t mean that we’re
formalists, per se. Are all architects who
make blue foam models formalists?
No, but there seems to be a real sense of
care and craft in your form-making. It’s
hard to deny the strong, instantly recognizable shapes in your buildings. The
impossible cantilevers of the WoZoCo
M Beautiful is a good word. It’s not a
bad word. You’re sceptical of the word
because it sounds like a camouflage for
things light and superficial. Beautiful
also covers a sense of excitement and
curiosity – astonishment is beautiful.
Using the word beautiful in this way
makes it constructive again. It can
MVRDV
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be a tool to judge progress. It’s a very
condensed word.
VR But this becomes an issue of how
we’re represented in interviews and
criticism. ‘Form-making’ sounds like a
linear process. We’ve been characterized as ‘data-scapers’ that simply plug
numbers into the computer and, boom,
there it is, there’s your building. This
is the standard story, an image of us
created in interviews. Of course, it is
never like that – it has never been like
that except for one or two projects
since we began in the mid-1990s. When
we realize architecture, it is never a
linear, one-to-one process. Certainly,
how we translate certain ideas into form
is a big part of the genetic make up of
our office. But our process is more like
trial and error.
placement in that field and I was not
selected – so I went with my second
choice: architecture. We didn’t have
interviews or portfolios – it was kind
of a random choice, everyone had the
same chance of getting in. It’s part of
the Dutch education system, which is
based on the belief that certain hidden
talents shouldn’t be blocked. Nathalie
had been interested in floor plans and
architectural drawings early on, since
she was young. She went straight from
high school to architecture school.
Winy did landscape architecture first.
His family has always worked with
plants and gardens, so he went from
the landscape side to Delft to study
urbanism, and then architecture. We all
met as students at the Technical University of Delft. I studied with Winy, having
already known Nathalie for a long time.
DV We haven’t used the word ‘data’ in
the office for years!
So MVRDV goes back to your college
days?
Expo 2000 have become, for better or
for worse, your stylistic calling card.
ON BERLIN [8.73%]
Can we talk a little about the beginnings
of MVRDV and how you got into architecture in the first place?
VR I became an architect almost randomly. I was originally studying chemistry, though I was not excited about
seeing myself work day and night in a
laboratory. I wanted to go into industrial design, but there was very limited
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VR The founding of our office is linked
to Berlin. After our studies, Winy and I
were working for Rem Koolhaas at the
Office for Metropolitan Architecture
and Nathalie was working at Mecanoo
when we had the idea to enter the European competition. We all decided that
we wanted to find a site in Germany, so
we piled up in a little car and just drove.
We ended up in Berlin, one year after
the wall came down. We immediately
knew we needed to find a Berlin site.
We got quite excited by the charged
What would be a beautiful city?
M There are so many beautiful cities.
We tried to approach this ideal in KM3 in
synergy. The ultimate model for a city
would be a super melting pot of people
that all want to push further, develop
further. There are different translations
of that: there is a flat model called
London that I like. There is a very empty
model called Berlin that I like very much
as well. There is the village
model like Amsterdam.
Does MVRDV think more
about cities than other
architects?
what we called mix-max – the ultimate
mixture. I personally believe in cities –
there is so much mix-max that you’re
endlessly surprised; it cultivates
enormous synergy, not only energy, but
M Maybe, but being an
architect that works with the
city is nothing new. I guess
my background in landscape architecture helps me
think about the connection
between scales. Too many
architects are concerned with
the object – almost edging
on fatalism. The current
momentum for architects to
think about cities is really
important. From the beginning of the 1990s, there
has been a desire to think
about larger processes
since globalization arrived.
Culturally, we’re in a situation
where what we produce as
individuals does not match
in scale with our desire for a
broader perspective. In a way,
this explains MVRDV’s practice, or our
position on maximizing all the possibilities in today’s technology – to participate in the enormous momentum of a
global desire to communicate.
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ON INTELLIGENCE [13.35%]
This is the Evolutionary City idea that
you suggested in KM3 and Space
Fighter. You described a high level of
interactivity between people and architecture; interaction involving the entire
population in city design. How would
that actually play out?
M That’s a dream. I’m aware of that.
I don’t know yet if it’s really possible…
What is the potential of this possibility?
M The potential is enormous. It’s kind
of hidden already in current real estate
practices. Working simultaneously
in multiple countries, developers are
offering their clients mass customization options that deal with architecture
in a much more fluid and responsive
manner than most architects. The evolution will be gradual, but I would love it
if one day everyone could effectuate
physical change in their environment.
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atmosphere there. We entered the competition and won it. And although the
building never materialized, the exposure we gained from this competition
helped us get grants from governments.
It pushed us to start our own office. At
that moment, it was not so busy at OMA.
Berlin is a place that is commonly defined by its past, while MVRDV is often
characterized as a forward-thinking,
future-oriented office. In what ways did
you find Berlin exciting?
We translated the voids of the city
into voids in our building. Empty space
became something we wanted to
preserve. How do you minimize the
impact of intervention? Do you make
something as flat as possible or as
vertical as possible? The thinking we
did for this project really informed
our WoZoCo housing in Amsterdam,
VR What we found exciting in Berlin
were the open spaces, the contextual
atmosphere of these locations.
We called the project Berlin Voids.
MVRDV
MVRDV
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amongst other buildings. The Mirador
Is everyone an architect then, or is no
one an architect?
M The options are similar. There are
two tendencies in today’s world. With
information readily available, we have
become increasingly critical of our
world; we are becoming both specialists
and generalists. We all read a lot online,
and want to operate, to respond, to have
a voice in that same communication
system; we want to be always present,
always updated in this climate and that
feeds simultaneously generalism and
specialism. There is a new proximity
between these two positions; they need
each other in our contemporary society.
Everyone becomes a social actor.
So, the Evolutionary City idea is created
through a collective intelligence; this
works assuming you start with a population that is educated.
residential building in Madrid
was essentially the standard
Prenzlauer Berg courtyard
residential block flipped 90
degrees. In any case, when
we found out that we won,
we were so excited that we took the
night train to Berlin – to see if we could
get a commission. We still want to build
something in Berlin, but most projects
there tend to die.
Yeah, Berlin is architecturally quite
unambitious.
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ON VPRO [8.02%]
Your first major built work was the Villa
VPRO in 1997, the headquarters for the
M True, but in general there is a tendency in contemporary society to grow
in this direction. I think the role of the
intellectual has changed radically in
the last 20 years.
Intellectualism
has become more
like common
sense. It’s not
like in the 1950s,
where everyone
operated ‘under’
public intellectuals. In a way,
we are all more
or less public
intellectuals.
Within today’s networked society, we
are finding ourselves in another kind
of public space. We have moved beyond
modernism, an era in which the plaza
was the model for public space, and the
leadership dictated a precise, rulesbased kind of urbanism. Today, the rules
are blurrier, but unlike many of my
colleagues, I don’t think that it’s the
end of urbanism. I simply think that it’s
another kind of urbanism, and I want
to give that a voice. It’s an urbanism
that is based on negotiations between
different socio-economic groups. I find
this much more fascinating than the
top-down, modernist model.
With new technologies, new possibilities in the formation of a virtual
public space, and new frameworks
for architecture and urban practices,
we should also expect new ways to
make mistakes!
M For the moment nothing is entirely
predictable. But the lack of awareness
for common responsibility is even more
worrisome. This doesn’t mean that I’m
looking for a new order, but I’m interested in common sense – innovative
common sense. In a way, this new
awareness of space, virtual space, is
educational on a societal level.
At the same time, it seems like we’ve
made so many mistakes already that
there is little sense in taking risks
or being creative. Just look at the
environment...
M People want safety right now.
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MVRDV
‘Let’s hedge our bets,’ ‘let’s get out while
we’re ahead.’ It’s the same fearful, protectionist attitude towards urban planning in Europe and America that you
mentioned earlier.
Evolutionary City ideal of collective
decision-making; the more we make
decisions collectively, the bigger the
decision-making population, the bigger
the possible damage, right?
monitor the development of difference;
although the monitoring aspect is an
intriguing one. That’s where architecture
can position itself – we see the Earth
changing, we monitor its development,
and we react.
M What do you think about that?
M But it’s even more dangerous to not
take the risk. The disasters are hidden;
we behave like the ostrich.
I like your suggestion that things are
revealed in time – that if we all behave
differently from each other, then the
It makes me think about how we operate, rationalize and strategize in polarized modes. Either we’re anti-modern
traditionalists, or we have Pig City
skyscrapers! Neither option seems
ethically sustainable or plausible, but
they provide us with something to react
to, something different from our daily
condition. However, I’m still wary of the
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chances of ruining everything are lower
than if we collectively choose the same
option. As a technique, it’s an interesting one – but that doesn’t mean that
you can do that consciously, that we can
ON THE FUTURE [11.20%]
You’re suggesting that the role of the
architect is to monitor, observe, theorize
and broadcast – essentially someone
who makes propositions to engage the
world in collective dialog. In the 3D City_
Cube project that you developed with
students from the Berlage Institute, you
propose 500-meter-wide wind tunnels
to farm wind energy that could power
immense cube cities each the size of
New York City, the largest city in the
United States. This is an extreme proposition. Are you suggesting that collective
problems are essentially unsolvable if
this were to be the solution?
M By nature, I don’t believe in insolubility. It’s true that our projects become
a little gigantesque and therefore outrageous. But on the other hand I’m really
fascinated by this scale. I’ll give you an
example. Also in the book, we presented
this idea to link Earth-orbiting satellites with cables and to connect them
with cushions of Teflon. These Teflon
clouds would then act as giant mirrors
that reflect UV rays, reducing the effects
of greenhouse heating and protecting
us against the harmful effects of the
sun. What’s fascinating is that this may
actually be technically possible. These
cushions are thousands of kilometres
wide. I don’t know when it will happen,
maybe in 200 years, but soon everything
will be possible.
It may become possible, technologically,
but economically we are moving towards
a breaking point at which we will have
to decide what to spend money on. Wars,
alternative energy and space travel all
have price tags in the trillions – we’re
getting to a point where the world economy can only justify spending for basic
necessities. The cost of flying a shuttle
into space offsets the global budget,
and hinders our financial ability to, say,
clean up oil spills or feed the hungry or
wage wars.
M Well, I’m suggesting that our economy needs this – our consumption
pattern asks for it.
Cultural critic Slavoj Žižek once said
that it was easier to imagine the end of
the world than the end of capitalism,
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but with today’s ecologic and economic
systems so intertwined, I almost can’t
imagine one ending without the other.
This kind of reminds me of the desperation of the situation we’re in. We can
invest in massive Teflon clouds: one day
we can’t afford to grow enough food,
but at least we will be protected from
UV rays. In a way, MVRDV’s future exists
after the end of the world. You guys
present a post-apocalyptic vision.
MYour observation on the mechanism
is correct. And of course we use a little
bit of apocalyptic suggestion to make
things doable – makeable. Then it becomes a technique for innovation as well.
Žižek’s quote indicates that there’s still
quite a world to explore. He doesn’t stop
innovation – he allows for the possibility
of it. That connects pretty well to what
our practice is about.
Another thing I find fascinating about
MVRDV is that you are very conscious
of environmental concerns, but avoid
addressing them directly or providing
these issues with an ethical position.
MVRDV is collaborating with Brad Pitt’s
Make It Right Foundation to design
houses for devastated areas of New
Orleans, so you’re environmentally
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conscious but I guess you would never
call yourselves green architects.
Dutch TV station. Quite a good start for
such a young office.
M The Club of Rome, and the work they
have published on human ecology and
growth, has coloured our development
more than the green architecture movement. Green has several bad connotations as well. I think William McDonough
and Michael Braungart’s cradle-tocradle party line is killing architecture.
It only leads to ugly buildings. The cost
of investing in these things reduces the
potential of architecture. Politicians
misuse ‘green’ to camouflage their
tasks. We’re ecological in the sense that
we celebrate diversity. It’s obvious in
our Expo Pavilion, but this desire to mix
VR The commission from VPRO was
completely out of the blue. We somehow
matched their profile perfectly. This
project was pretty incredible and it took
our practice to a much higher level.
DV We weren’t even 30 when we started
it. To be given such a big responsibility
was the most amazing thing. I guess it’s
not so different than when a huge sum
of money is given to a young filmmaker
that has never made a film before. Some
really incredible work has been produced when young people are trusted
with responsibility.
VR We were interested in going for the
maximum condition. They really wanted
to make something special. We got
almost carte blanche.
DV What came together was the fact
that we wanted to deal with this typology – the office – at a time when many
ideas about working were changing
under the influence of information
technology. VPRO stated early in that
they were not interested in standard
solutions; like their company, the building itself was to be part of the media
landscape.
But the media landscape in Holland
is very complicated. The whole idea of
VPRO is that it is constantly changing;
they often collaborate with companies,
they sometimes co-produce. So we
wanted to have a certain percentage
of rooms, office space, etc., and for the
spaces to change over time as their
work habits change. The idea was to
make a shell within which the whole
operation could literally expand. One
stops thinking about working ‘with
those guys on the fourth floor’ because
you don’t know where the floor starts
and stops.
In those days, a lot of people referred
to us as structuralists. John Habraken
was one of the first to connect space
with computation. We always believed
that was some kind of Delft mentality.
VR He was the father of the skeleton
and infill system. The skeleton of the
building is permanent and everything
inside is able to shift and float and move
and change. He changed the fundamental relationship between architects,
space-making and users.
DV VPRO’s attitude is very contemporary; no one was obliged to be in the
office, but we were asked to seduce
them into being there.
VR They wanted a meeting point for
journalists and researchers, but also for
people that would normally not meet
each other. The idea was that this would
be a place where new ideas could pop up.
Has it worked?
DVYes but not instantly; it took some
time but now it works the way we
expected.
In the end, the building is about how
people work, how work environments
are seen, how office environments can
MVRDV
MVRDV
22
be both architecture and a nice place
to be, how an office can be used in the
development of the identity of the
company.
ON PRESS [6.28%]
Villa VPRO was one of these poster
and radio programs. They’re perceived
as a pretty liberal, anarchistic group.
Essentially, whatever building by whichever architect they picked would have
been well publicized.
Even before the building was completed, we were automatically referred
to as the guys that did the VPRO headquarters. Like VPRO, people saw us
groups and functions is also in many of
our housing projects.
ON LIMITLESSNESS [7.99%]
A lot of your research projects have
names that end with the word ‘mixture’,
and a lot of your built projects are
physically structured as stacks.
M That was a residential extension
project and it was the only way to get
them on top of the existing building.
The government wanted pitched roofs
on top of all the buildings in this area.
We accepted that rule but criticized or
commented through colour.
Looking at MVRDV’s oeuvre, one starts
to notice a consistent jumping between
poles. The VPRO office and the WoZoCo
M Stacking is the result of the issue
of capacity, of making more things
possible on the same spot. It can lead
to more diversity, and more conflict,
which make us find more ways of dealing with each other – which actually
leads to architecture.
MVRDV also uses the generic pitchedroof house form quite often.
projects that get widely published even
during construction. Almost immediately,
architecture students around the world
copied the building’s iconic gestures:
the sloped interior floors, the building’s
cross-section articulated on the façade.
How much has this project defined the
identity of MVRDV?
VR Everyone in Holland knows VPRO as
a TV station that makes unique television
MONO.KULTUR #18
as independent, alternative, slightly
humorous, intellectual, but not
academic. De Groene Amsterdamer,
a critical magazine that’s a bit like
The New Yorker put the VPRO office on
M It’s not so much that we want to
make them – but it’s a comment on the
notion that retro landscape is often
desired. In Europe or certain parts of
America where you see the pitched
roof, it’s used as a visual confirmation
of existing values. It’s part of the same
fearful, protectionist attitude I was
talking about earlier in urban planning.
We’re using the form of the pitched
roof to subvert; it’s a little like the wolf
in sheep’s clothing, or a Trojan horse.
We use this shape because it is visually expected, but more importantly
because it carries our criticism of the
interpretation of form.
Are your blue houses in Didden part of
this critique?
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MONO.KULTUR #18
housing both operate under limits –
zoning restrictions, space constraints,
height limitations – while projects like
3D City, Teflon clouds, and Pig City deal
M I think you need them both. There
are so many limits on our current notion
of public space and collectiveness –
so we need an ethics of endlessness
the cover with the words ‘The building
from hell.’ Some of the office workers
complained about acoustics, I think.
It was controversial from the start; we
were labelled immediately as experimental and interesting, but also problematic and risky.
So this commission defined a lot in
our practice, even just on the level of
branding. When people gave us
commissions afterwards they expected
something similar. Also, building
Villa VPRO completely shortened the
DV We know how to take risks, to turn
things upside down, to be contemporary;
I think people recognize this and many
of the designs and decisions that we
realized in Villa VPRO definitely ended
up being copied
by others.
VR Other architects often think
that we’re really
smart in terms of using the media.
We got our project published in major
newspapers rather than architecture
magazines. During the construction
of WoZoCo, there was a picture of it on
development span of the office; we were
given higher profile projects quite early
on, like the Dutch Pavilion for the World
Expo in Hannover.
more with possibilities through
limitlessness.
How do these
opposites work
together for you?
24
to understand the potential in it. When
confronted with limitations, you have
to montage what you would actually
like to do within the limitations; it’s like
showing a man living in a box a glimpse
of future life outside of the box. This
the front page of the biggest newspaper
in Amsterdam. It just happened. At a certain moment, it got to be a bit of overkill
and people started becoming critical of
the hype.
DV It was the Spice Girls effect.
MVRDV
MVRDV
26
ON IDENTITY [11.20%]
There was a concerted effort in the late
1990s and early 2000s for Dutch architects to brand themselves as Dutch, no?
Bart Lootsma’s SuperDutch came out
in 2000, and pretty much lumped you
guys together with Neutelings Riedijk,
NOX, Erick van Egeraat, West 8 and
Rem Koolhaas. It had this effect of flattening all the practices into flavours,
and Koolhaas seemed especially perturbed by this – his perception being
that the neo-Dutch aesthetic spawned
from his office in the first place. In
2001, during a lecture at the Technical
University of Utrecht, Koolhaas and
Hermann Hertzberger were shown
slides of various images and they were
asked to respond to the images. Koolhaas responded to the image of Villa
VPRO by saying, ‘we have here a building
conceived by OMA,’ referring
to its similarity to his Jessieu
Library design in 1992. Even
in one of your first major
monographs, El Croquis, the
text starts off with a reference to Koolhaas and OMA. How indebted do you
feel to this heritage, and how much of it
is constructed?
VR I’m glad you mentioned both Hertzberger and Koolhaas because, in a way,
they are our fathers. Hertzberger was
the most visible institutional architect
in Holland when we were studying, and
Koolhaas was when we started working.
You can say that VPRO was a mixture of
these two influences. Look at Hertzberger’s Centraal Beheer office building
MONO.KULTUR #18
in Apeldoorn from 1972. We were
drenched in these ideas.
Was there a moment when you needed
to reject your fathers?
DV We’ve been working for so long that
their influence almost has a sentimental
quality for us now. MVRDV itself, like
Koolhaas and Hertzberger, is conditioned by being from Holland; there is
a Dutch condition, a Dutch mentality.
This company is very Dutch, our pseudoanarchistic attitude is very Dutch, we
were trained 100% Dutch, and we were
influenced by 100% Dutch. Now that
we’re doing much more work in different places, we’re recognizing our own
particularities much more – testing our
Dutch social views and opinions against
those of other countries. So slowly all
these things become less literal and
more autonomous.
What’s it like working in other countries?
The Dutch landscape and the country’s
relationship to water play such a large
role in your work. Do you see yourselves
more as Dutch architects working abroad
or global architects that happen to be
from the Netherlands?
DV We pursue an open analytical
approach in which we try to keep questions open. Some cultures try to answer
questions. Adding or subtracting layers
of information becomes something
irrelevant. In general, we realize that our
analysis of foreign clients is something
new.
allows the limits to be criticized and
the constraints exposed – our work
becomes a platform for this discussion.
So what are the limits of limitlessness?
M We ourselves are our limitations.
There will be no high-rises at a certain
point because we are polite to our neighbours; we want collective public space,
so therefore we can’t build everywhere.
There are a series of spatial requirements
that we collectively want that sometimes
contradict other things that we want,
namely density, or more functions with
more diverse people. This contradiction
is explored in this manner. The escape
to endlessness sharpens our goals.
ON FLOW [11.02%]
It’s easy to read a modernist trajectory
in MVRDV’s work. You have used quantitative, statistical information as a way
to diagnose problems and conditions
in the world. As the modernist adage
goes: If we can quantify our world, if
we can quantify our problems, then we
can formulate a suitable method to fix
everything.
M We’re going deeper now, aren’t we?
Partly I agree with that. That’s one
message to explore. We’re partly based
on that modernist ideal – we like it.
Modernism was one of those moments
in time when architects and urbanists
explored wider meanings and global
issues as problems to fix; problems
which they failed to fix – but I’m
completely aware that after modernism,
it took us about forty years to recover
from its failures. We built things that
were horrible – we chalk up these
negative components to individualism,
and a lot of criticism has appeared after
that. Right now is exactly the moment
when there is a desire to combine a
large-scale urban assault with the
fluidity of the small-scale architectural
intervention and to see how that can
work out. I adore my grandfathers and
I see as well their limitations; although
critique of the ‘68 generation is so
protected. Now is the moment to give
our momentum, our practice, a numerical potential. Now the technology we
have allows for a deepening of the
statistical methods of contextualization
and we can escape from the simplicity
of ‘what if’ scenarios. What fascinates
me is the possibility to mathematically
model our context, our world.
What can’t we mathematically model?
M That’s the best question all morning – because I’m tempted to say that
we can do everything. Of course, maybe
not now, yet, but I believe that this will
become possible in the near future.
So it’s a belief that you can do everything with math. And ironically, belief is
one of the few things that we normally
cannot quantify.
M No. Technically I think it’s possible.
I don’t want to use the word belief because it can lead to doctrine.
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MONO.KULTUR #18
Yet what you’re describing is categorically a doctrine.
MYou can see that I’m hesitant; I am
fundamentally sceptical of doctrines,
but having said that, I know as well that
sometimes a certain driven direction,
a certain leadership is needed to bring
things about… You want to force me to
say that there is a very specific hierarchy
within what I perceive to be balance.
We’re both aware that there is always an
end to the endless cycle of development,
there is always a temporary relief in the
power of mathematical data as they are
always influenced by other data.
In our so-called Information Age, data is
endlessly described as flowing. Critics
and observers dramatically compare it
to the cascade of numbers from the
opening sequence of The Matrix – the
1999 Wachowski brothers film. Data,
visualized as such, presents an atmosphere in which there is a direct and
immediate relationship between information and knowledge.
M It’s about seeking opportunity. You
see data as a cloud that surrounds you;
it could be fascinating software, a game.
It’s about how this information is combined with your personal aura.
What is also fascinating is that it’s a constant stream of opportunities, constant
change. How does MVRDV deal conceptually with data, while managing its task
to build solid buildings? In other words,
what is the relationship between the flow
of data and the fixedness of built form?
28
M That’s exactly why buildings are
temporary. They represent a moment
in time. They are a fixation of the
zeitgeist. I use the word petrifaction
a lot. That is architecture: no more, no
less. It’s a petrifaction of momentum;
which is beautiful in itself. It’s like a
documentary.
VR Our first project in Japan was a little
museum in the village of Higashi-Kubiki.
working, living, how to make a city. All of
these aspects, when combined with the
The client, who wasn’t Japanese, was
able to see both our own practice as
well as a Japanese logic in our design.
We start in a rational way and turn it
into a poetic thing. If a Japanese architect did the same project, he would
start with poetry and make it rational.
The outcome would be different. It’s a
Dutch building in Japan. We exported
the methodology, the way of working.
contemporary use of city, space and
time, does not necessitate funny- or
funky-shaped buildings, but it promotes
different ways of programming buildings and the environments in which they
are built. We’re never that far from the
original function and we also don’t deal
with these issues in a symbolic way. We
truly want to deal with function. We are
interested in the complexity of a project
and how to deal with it in real life.
So we’re condemned to live in spaces
that always refer to the past?
M That is completely true. Completely
correct.
DV We try to lift the most puzzling
elements out of each project differently.
There are a thousand different ways to
do each project and they all define the
edge of a field of possibilities. We deal
a lot with very normal issues, actually:
MVRDV
30
MONO.KULTUR #18
Index
A
Architect 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14,
15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
Architects 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 18, 19, 23, 24,
25
Architectural 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 25
Architecture 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17,
18, 20, 21, 23, 26
Atmosphere 13, 26
Attitude 16, 19, 21, 24
B
Based 3, 10, 15, 25
Belief 10, 25
Believe 11, 17, 19, 25
Berlin 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14
Between 3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 19, 21, 26
Blue 9, 19, 21
Build 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20,
21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
Building 4, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20,
21, 23, 24, 26, 27
Building’s 3, 20
Buildings 3, 9, 14, 18, 21, 26, 27
C
Cities 5, 8, 11, 17
City 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 21, 22,
25, 27
Club 5, 18
Codes 3
Collective 8, 15, 16, 17, 22, 25
Commission 5, 14, 19, 23
Common 8, 13, 15
Company 3, 19, 20, 24
Competition 5, 10, 13
Connect 7, 8, 11, 17, 18, 19
Constructed 3, 4, 24
Consumption 4, 17
Contemporary 15, 23, 27
Critical 15, 20, 23
Critique 8, 21, 25
Cube 5, 17
Curiosity 7, 8
Curious 7
Current 6, 7, 11, 12, 22
D
Data 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 26
Deal 8, 11, 12, 16, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27
Defined 20, 23
Designers 8
Develop 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 17, 18, 20,
23, 26
Developers 4, 12
Development 3, 7, 17, 18, 20, 23, 26
Different 4, 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 19, 24, 27
Dutch 5, 9, 10, 19, 23, 24, 27
E
Earth 3, 5, 6, 17
Economy 8, 17
Environments 19, 27
Essentially 6, 14, 17, 20
Europe 7, 16, 18
Everything 4, 7, 16, 17, 19, 25
Evolutionary 3, 8, 12, 15, 16
Excited 10, 14
Exciting 3, 13
Expo 5, 10, 13, 18, 25, 27
F
Fascinating 4, 15, 17, 18, 26
Field 5, 10, 27
Form 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 25,
26
Formalist 9
Foundation 6, 8, 18
Future 3, 4, 13, 17, 18, 22, 25
MVRDV
G
Game 8
Global 6, 11, 17, 24, 25
Green 3, 5, 17, 18
Grow 6, 15, 18
Guys 18, 19, 20, 24
H
Hertzberger 24
Holland 19, 20, 24
House 4, 5, 17, 18, 21
Houses 4, 5, 18, 21
Housing 5, 6, 13, 21, 22
I
Idea 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24,
25
Ideas 3, 4, 10, 19, 24
Identity 4, 20, 24
Image 5, 10, 24
influence 19, 24
Information 3, 5, 7, 8, 15, 19, 24, 25, 26
Innovation 3, 7, 18
Interested 10, 15, 19, 27
Interviews 4, 10
Issues 18, 25, 27
K
Koolhaas 10, 24
L
Landscape 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 19, 21, 24
Larger 4, 6, 11
Layered 5
Level 5, 12, 15, 19, 23
Life 4, 5, 22, 27
Limits 5, 22, 25
M
Maas 3, 4, 7
Major 14, 23, 24
31
Media 3, 5, 6, 10, 19, 20, 23, 26
Models 9
Modernist 3, 15, 25
Moment 3, 5, 11, 13, 15, 23, 24, 25, 26
Monitor 3, 17
MVRDV 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 18, 20,
21, 24, 25, 26
N
Nathalie 3, 9, 10
Netherlands 4, 24
Night 7, 10, 14
Number 4, 5
Numbers 8, 10, 26
O
Office 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20, 21,
23, 24
Often 6, 13, 19, 21, 23
Ourselves 6, 8, 15, 18, 24, 25
P
Past 4, 6, 9, 13, 26
Pavilion 5, 9, 18, 23
People 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 23,
25
Place 4, 5, 10, 13, 19, 20, 24
Platform 4, 25
Play 7, 12, 24
Point 17, 19, 25
Position 4, 6, 8, 11, 15, 17, 18
Possibility 5, 12, 18, 25
Potential 5, 12, 18, 22, 25
Practice 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 23,
24, 25, 27
Problems 17, 25
Programming 3, 8, 27
Project 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 27
Projects 5, 6, 10, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23
Published 4, 18, 20, 23
32
MONO.KULTUR #18
Q
Quantify 25
Question 4, 5, 8, 24, 25
Questions 4, 8, 24
R
Real 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 23,
24, 27
Relationship 19, 24, 26
Research 3, 5, 7, 19, 21
Residential 6, 14, 21
Responsibility 15, 19
Rijs 3, 4, 9
Role 15, 17, 24
S
Series 5, 25
Simply 4, 8, 10, 15
Simultaneously 7, 12, 15
Situation 4, 11, 18
Social 15, 24
Socio-economic 4, 15
Space 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 25,
26, 27
Stacking 4, 5, 9, 21
Standard 10, 14, 19
Started 19, 23, 24
Structure 3, 4, 5, 21
Students 3, 10, 17, 20
Systems 5, 8, 18
T
Talk 7, 10, 21
Teflon 17, 18
Theoretical 3, 5, 6
Things 7, 8, 9, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26
Thinking 8, 13, 19
Today’s 7, 11, 15, 18
Together 5, 19, 22, 24
Colophon
U
University 3, 7, 10, 24
Urban 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 21, 25
V
Villa 3, 6, 11, 14, 20, 23, 24, 27
Virtual 6, 15
VPRO 3, 6, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24
W
Wanted 10, 13, 19, 21
Whole 8, 19,
Winy 3, 7, 10
Work 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22,
23, 24, 25, 27
World 3, 6, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25
WoZoCo 3, 9, 13, 21, 23
Y
Young 10, 19
33
mono.kultur
Naunynstrasse 80
D-10997 Berlin
+49.30.21809090
Interview: Carson Chan
Photography: Rob ‘t Hart (Didden
Village, Dutch Pavilion, Matsudai,
Mirador, Portrait, WoZoCo);
MVRDV (Berlin Voids, VPRO)
Illustration: MVRDV (L9W, Pig
City); MVRDV, Berlage Institute,
MIT and cThrough (Space Fighter);
MVRDV, Berlage Institute and
Wieland & Gouwens (3D Cube:
Study on the Compact City)
Design: Konst & Teknik
[email protected]
www.mono-kultur.com
Publisher: Kai von Rabenau
Editors: Elodie Evers; Renko Heuer;
Ute Kühn; Magdalena Magiera;
Caroline Muntendorf; Florian Rehn;
Tina Wessel
Thank you: Laurent Benner; Thomas
Braunagel at Zeitwerk; Laurenz
Brunner; Kim Fichter Braun, Johann
Schnaus and Gordon Young at yfbs;
Gila Kaplan; Vivian Kea; Silke
Klinnert; Jan Knikker, Isabel Pagel
and Irene Visser-Berends at MVRDV;
Gunhild Kranz; Otfried Kranz;
Christina Leckebusch; Urs Lehni;
Radovan Scasascia; Claudia Schenk;
Carsten Schwesig; Sophia Sperandio
at Rob ‘t Hart; Alexis Zavialoff.
Research Assistant: Denis Pieper
Copy Editing: Molly MacPherson;
Kari Rittenbach
Printing: Druckerei Bunter Hund
Distribution: Vice Versa Berlin,
www.vice-versa-vertrieb.de
Paper: LumiArt 135g/m2;
Resa Offset 100g/m2, 170g/m2
Fonts: Akkurat, www.lineto.com;
Dutch 811, www.bitstream.com
www.mvrdv.nl
VISDP Kai von Rabenau
ISSN 1861-7085
All rights reserved. The copyright
remains with mono.kultur and the
authors and artists. No part of this
publication may be reproduced in
whole or part without written
permission from the publishers.
This issue is dedicated to Henry
Anselm Heuer (21.08.2008, 12h23)
This issue was kindly supported
by Zeitwerk.
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