GRAS Arquitectos MVRDV   Spain   The metallic structure that is also a vertical forest flanks a floodable central plaza – the Green Hall – surrounded by other programs. The circulations and accesses lead to this plaza, fit out with porous pavements and new urban furniture, lighting

MVRDV   Poland   Located in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, which was the German Breslau, the Concordia Design building highlights the Dutch firm MVRDV’s capacity to deal with all kinds of situations. In this case the situation could hardly have been more complic

MVRDV   China   The Rotterdam firm MVRDV has turned a shopping mall built in the 1980s into a public space with a swimming pool in Tainan, a city in the south of the island of Taiwan. Tainan Spring, as the faciity is called, is part of a larger plan to regenerate th

MVRDV   South Korea   Located in the very heart of Seoul, an overpass for vehicles, 16 meters high at its highest and built with steel and reinforced concrete, has been transformed into a huge elevated walkway almost a kilometer long that is part of an ambitious project t

MVRDV   South Korea   Perched high up on a hill close to the city of Anyang, in South Korea, the project is included in a plan developed in 1999 to revitalize the natural environment and attract visitors through a series of artistic interventions. The path leading up to t

MVRDV   Netherlands   The city of Almere, within the metropolitan area of Amsterdam, is on the verge of experiencing a large population growth geered by urban plans like that of Oosterwold or Almere 2030, which foresees the construction of 60,000 new homes. In this contex

MVRDV   Netherlands   In contrast with urban plans where the structure is rigid and predictable, the proposal for the development of Almere Oosterwold is based on freedom of both individual and collective initiatives. The area of 43 square kilometers, located at the edge

MVRDV   China   Over the last twenty years, the incredible economic growth of China has led to enormous urbanization, with massive migrations from rural to urban areas. Though impressive in size, most of these urban developments are rather monotonous, lacking divers

MVRDV   Netherlands   Subtracted temporarily from the world wide flow of trade, 3,500 containers are gathered in Rotterdam to form a megacontainer on the scale of the city: the City Container. These containers are used as the envelope – floor, walls, and ceiling – of an i

MVRDV   Netherlands   In 1999, the Netherlands had a population of 15.5 million people and almost the same number of pigs, with 15.2 millions distributed in a total of 16.400 farms. Pig City proposes an alternative solution to the current bio-industry, exploring how to ch

MVRDV   South Korea   Since its construction in the 1970s, the overpass by Seoul’s Central Station connected Namdaemun market with the area located east of the train tracks until safety inspections in 2006 deemed the structure unsafe and intended to demolish and rebuild i

Reminiscent of those rooms in mansions of the European nobility and bourgeoisie that were full of motley objects in a clutter, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen – Rotterdam’s leading cultural institution, which brings together the legacy of the two illus

Located in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, which was the German Breslau, the Concordia Design building highlights the Dutch firm MVRDV’s capacity to deal with all kinds of situations. In this case the situation could hardly have been more complic

Chinese president Xi Jinping a few years ago lambasted the ‘weird architecture’ that international stars were building in his country (see Arquitectura Viva 169), but his denouncement does not seem to have been much heeded. Otherwise there would be n

Headed by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries, the Rotterdam-based firm MVRDV has since 1993 pursued a highly daring kind of architecture, radically festive and well distanced from conventionalisms, that has not run out of steam through

Luis Fernández-Galiano   MVRDV’s work takes us to the other side of the looking glass. As is known, much of recent Dutch architecture is effervescently experimental. Tirelessly inventive and imaginatively innovative, we like to think that its roots can be found in the manufa

Laura Fernández Suárez   The visionary and illusionist work of MVRDV is overwhelming in its prolific variety. The Dutch company has gone from three founding members whose last names give it its name – Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries – to an international inf

In the presence of the king and queen of Spain and the feel of being at the threshold of turbulent times, the fourth congress organized by the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad in collaboration with Arquitectura Viva brought a cast of leading archite

Nothing expresses the American dream of the 50s as well as the fashion model on the threshold of the Eames house or the paradigmatic marriage grasped by the lens of Julius Shulman in the Case Study House 21 by Pierre Koenig. That domestic and innocen

If seen in small images, what sets Jodhpur, the blue oasis in the Indian Rajasthan desert, apart from the famous 1:500 model of the future Shanghai? One could say that color is more important than density in differentiating these two Asian cities, lo

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Monopoly is a  a construction game, but a real estate game. The winner is whoever man- ages to put houses and hotels in the city’s best areas, bankrupting the other players with his greedy tolls. The colorful wooden prisms, cylinders, pyramids and ar

The third millennium began in Seattle on the 4th of December 1999. Many awaited it at Greenwich, under the huge tent that Richard Rogers built on the Meridian, in uneven competition with the Pacific atolls where the time zones situate the change of d