I live around the corner from this building, and to claim that the building is out of context with the surroundings, or that its color scheme is somehow at fault, is to not understand the context of the surroundings.

Don’t be fooled by the three houses you can see in the image, the neighborhood is predominantly warehouses, freightyards, railyards, car repair shops, and vacant lots…(my block has only a handful of residential buildings amongst primarily industrial buildings.)

That aside, haven’t we as a design culture evolved beyond the knee jerk refusal of projects that don’t utilize the materials and fashion of some previous era as glorified wallpaper?

This part of town is littered with gut-churning new buildings who only have bad red brick cladding to recommend them. If you walk past this building, you can’t help but notice that it’s different from its neighbors, but it in no way destroys the street… can we please let the future be the future?!

mmmm so right – let the [...] -Sauce [...] be with you!

And it’s also a lack (denial?) of context.
The whole thing unfortunately reeks from the incongruity of ‘progress’…

This is a multifamily building, where obviously the encroachment between units can only happen once (due the small size).

In any case it has more to do with Le Corbusier’s scheme (see Unite d’habitacion, 1952) than MRVDV’s, and even MVRDVs might be based in Le Corbusier.

HOwardG, I do agree about the railings, they’re huge in porportion, don’t mind the other comments.

It’s a nice project, the double height could be a future den/studio/bedroom, I think that was the idea.

And I wonder about the apparantly thin walls.
An 83% job…