Venice Biennale 2012: ‘Freeland’ and ‘Porous City’ / MVRDV + the why factory

Freeland / and

By invitation of Director David Chipperfield, MVRDV and The Why Factory will participate in the 2012 Venice Biennale. The main contribution consists of the collaborative project ‘Freeland’ forming part of the single exhibition in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini. Further contribution is made by Winy Maas and The Why Factory with ‘Porous City’ to the EU CITY Program, initiated by the European Forum for Architectural Policies (EFAP) representing Europe for the first time at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

More details on the two exhibitions after the break.

MVRDV presents “Welcome to the Vertical Village” in Seoul

© mvrdvpr
“Welcome to the Vertical Village” is a new exhibition now open until October 7th at Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea.  The show is orchestrated by MVRDV and The Why Factory and is on its second run since opening in Taipei.  Each city has experience a different design of the exhibit, which allows visitors to walk through a giant model of a possible Vertical Village and experience the spatial richness and three dimensionality.  The exhibit explores “a city under rapid transformation” and the alternative to the “block attack” to find the ideal built environment.  The show features films, outdoor sculpture and a giant vertical village composed of more than 700 objects.
More on the exhibition after the break.

Urban Farming in numbers

Interesting study by MVRDV, The Why Factory and Stroom Den Haag.

A lot has been said (through) on , but many don’t consider their feasibility.

I´m not being pessimist (I grow some of my own vegetables and herbs), but I think that urban farming goes more in the direction of the last phrase of the video: “could it (urban farming) help bringing some agriculture into the cities to bring us closer to our food again?”.

Animation by Wieland Gouwens

Update: The same study applied to Manhattan