Mvrdv: Spatial Exploration

So, how does a young company such as MVRDV formulate this fascinating research and rescue operation? How can they possibly come up with the methodology for solving such enormous density disorders? In a word - Factual analysis. MVRDV are the world heavyweights when it comes to shaping spatial solutions, and by accessing the huge amounts of data that emerge during modern building and design processes - they can apply their automated formulaic know-how and come up with the goods, time after time. This form of datascaping is no secret either, cross-sections of company study results are published and easily at hand. But the team at MVRDV forges a strong collaborative design process that seems to know no bounds, creating site- and topographical-specific solutions while adding extra-dimensional notion to architectural, design and landscaping projects. The company openly admits that actual creativity plays a relatively small part in their design process, and that some of their most striking vertical innovations could only look the way they do due to the logical outcome of the data processing. But whatever their methods, the unbound logic (spouting from their own in-house fact-crunching 3D software solutions) as concrete as it may be, regularly bends reality out of all recognition, and the world of architecture is listening intently. The bustling cityscape as we know it could well be about to change.

Liuzhou

There can be nothing less pleasing to the eye than a disused quarry cutting a giant stony scar through an otherwise beautifully lush landscape. Aesthetics aside, in forested areas, quarries and disused mining complexes are wide open to erosion and weaken local natural resolve. One such area right next to the southern China city of Liuzhou is an old limestone mine parked right at the centre of a flourishing World Heritage Site. In true audacious Chinese style, five mountains in the valley have literally been cut in half; the resulting hideous scarring posing a danger to the local eco-system, risking rapid erosion and the loss of a picturesque region within the incredible Karst Mountain range. These tumbling terraces of box houses will intimately layer the overworked landscape to help form a picturesque, almost rice-paddy development perception. Inhabitants - the overspill population from Liuzhou - will enjoy panoramic views of the forest and light-drenched interiors with ample outdoor terrace space to help define their own personal paradise. Embracing the landscape like this will counteract rapid rock erosion, and the cracks of impairment that are already showing will be utilised as natural passageways to the neighbouring city, thus avoiding any feeling of seclusion or urban isolation.       

It would be easy to draw the conclusion that MVRDV's almost robotic data-specific design approach should naturally generate blocky, mundanely symmetrical façades and spaces, but how would making us all part of an indistinguishable cityscape achieve anything? The original founders of Rotterdam-based MVRDV, Jacob van Rijs, Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries have always maintained a certain boisterous dynamic that - though based on specific cityscape data analysis - delivers a much more playful architectural outcome than would be expected. It is a shining example of how architecture can not only be practical, even logical, while at the same time exerting immense social consideration (sometimes bordering on humour) and environmental awareness to keep us all wilfully engaged. After all, less than one percent of the population are structure aficionados, the rest of us need more than simple practicality to feel truly at home. It's an ethos that spreads into all walks of life, and one perfect illustration of explicit social arrangement mingled with data-specific design is the WoZoCo retirement home in Amsterdam, one of the practice's first assignments back in 1997. The incredible density of population in Amsterdam threatens to overrun the open, garden-orientated nature of the city and subsequently the culture of certain city quarters. The western garden-quarter is a good example. With the survival of green landscape heavily dependent on the planning outcome of the 100 new residences required for the community's ageing population, MVRDV set the wheels of automated data-digestion into motion - and with all aspects considered, including comfort, environment and client sunlight requirements - came up with the amazing conclusion that to keep everyone happy, including the local community, the new block could only entertain 87 apartments. Not wanting to fall short in any area, least of all on essential accommodation requirements, they then set about cantilevering the remaining 13 apartments from the north façade. With this prototypical approach, the new extruded apartments appear to float around the block, offering an architectural spectacle, while keeping the landscape as open and green as possible.

New York 2012

Even though the Olympic Games of 2012 are now headed towards a slightly nervous London - already mumbling excuses about budget versus glam-factor in the wake of the spectacularly decadent Beijing games, MVRDV's proposal for New York's Olympic Village would never have required such negative pretext. A skyscraping city of prophecy, indicating - even on the stage of world sport - our need to reach upward and accommodate the future. Although the design thoroughly exploits a familiar variety of New York-style urbanity, the off-kilter angular appearance, with some of the towers actually leaning in and kissing at the 30th floor, shows how spectacular and forgiving this style of digitally compressed density can actually be. The open skyline exposed by varying slants, coupled with spaces left open at ground level, give the site a hugely satisfying three-dimensional outlook. Like a Manhattan city block, densely occupied from one perspective and agreeably empty from another.

Anyang Peak

 In a display of extreme diversity - and extreme design - MVRDV were commissioned to upgrade Anyang Park, a neglected public area next to the city of Anyang - South Korea. The Park was a well-visited spectacle in the 1970's and 80's, but sheer natural beauty alone wasn't enough to keep it astride with the rapid momentum of social progress; increased mobility enabling families to venture further from home and visit more spectacular attractions. The original winding path to the Anyang Peak did afford visitors a restricted view of the surrounding landscape, but it just wasn't cutting it like it used to, so the vertically enthused MVRDV set about constructing a complex rescue package. Of course a tower would be the obvious key to unlocking this social dilemma, but the significance of a tower in such a location would only part solve the problem of magnetism. To truly elucidate the site, things needed a touch more imagination, so MVRDV decided to supercharge the site. By extruding the existing walkway spirally upward they could seamlessly elevate public access. Bringing their dimensional competence into play meant not only increasing the actual altitude of the peak, affording panoramic vistas, but also offered an artistic lure to prospective countryside revellers. This seamless intervention cunningly eclipses any mundane perception of a tower, and the construction itself, as a work of art in its own right, has managed to pull the crowds back into the area. Not since 62 BC and the awe-inspiring construction of a 50 metre high tumulus at the summit of Mt Nemrut in eastern Turkey, has anyone been so successful in combining the extrusion of a mountain peak with the haughty demands of social purpose - though this time at least, we are left with an impressive modernist event-pavilion structure rather than a dusty egocentric tomb-sanctuary.

Conclusion

Since the company was formed in 1991, after the three founders won the prestigious European 2 design prize for the Berlin Voids; an apartment complex in West Berlin, the young upstarts (in an architectural sense) at MVRDV have traversed a number of unique conceptual design areas. Their assault on the unsightly sprawl that progressively envelops the planet comes mainly in the form of conceptual vertical suburbias, each with their own unique twist on site-specific requirements. It's pretty funky stuff that employs a very engaging manner of suggestion, an architectural showmanship that bravely coerces trends, helping to push us toward salvaging what's left of our precious natural woodland areas. In simple terms, they are building for a small planet, but from such a different direction to the misguided utopian dreamscapes of the tenement block - circa 1960's and 70's. By maximising urban density in a distinctive manner, with appealing structures housing artificial natures attached to light-filled living spaces, the whole high-rise thing becomes extremely palpable once more. Especially it seems at home in Holland, a country with a massive 16-million inhabitants hanging on to a reclaimed bite-sized wedge of north European terrain. As you can imagine, here the only way is up, and MVRDV have been extremely successful within the faint waterlogged boundaries of their homeland. It was this success, however, that opened the eyes of the world to the company's gusto for a vertical challenge; that and a number of awards have recently sent them hurtling toward the summit of a demanding international design market, that is, let's face it, rapidly running out of space.

For more information on their projects, you can visit the MVRDV website here.