Tag: the-why-factory | ArchDaily

Expanding Practice: Architecture Think Tanks at the Intersection of Research and Design

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 07:30:00 +0000

In architecture, most practices revolve around delivering projects to clients. Offices are shaped by deadlines, budgets, and clear briefs. While this structure produces buildings, it rarely leaves space for architects to question broader issues — about how we live, how cities are changing, or what the future demands of design. But alongside this production-focused system, a quieter movement has emerged: studios, collectives, and foundations that prioritize research, experimentation, and reflection. These are the architecture think tanks — spaces designed not to build immediately, but to think first.

Towards an Architecture of Many Intelligences: How Collective Knowledge Shapes the Built Environment

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 08 May 2025 07:30:00 +0000

As architecture navigates a rapidly changing world shaped by ecological urgency, social transformation, and technological acceleration, the notion of intelligence is shifting. No longer confined to individual cognition or artificial computation, intelligence can emerge from cultural memory, collective practices, and adaptive systems. In this broader sense, architecture becomes a field of convergence, where natural, artificial, and social intelligences intersect to offer new ways of designing and building.

MVRDV and The Why Factory Exhibit Architecture and Urban Activism in their Paris Office

Dima Stouhi — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 06:30:00 +0000

MVRDV and The Why Factory's have collaborated on an exhibition that explores the principles of "architecture and urbanism calls to action”. Titled "Agir", the exhibition is open to the public since June 9th, in the connected spaces of the ArchiLib Gallery and MVRDV’s Paris office. The exhibition takes its name from the French verb meaning “act”, and examines the activist works of MVRDV and The Why Factory, revealing its capacity to address a wide variety of environmental and social challenges.

MVRDV and Delft University of Technology Release "Le Grand Puzzle", an Urban Study of Marseille in the South of France

Christele Harrouk — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 06:30:00 +0000

MVRDV and The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology) revealed “Le Grand Puzzle”, a book that holds ambitious ideas for Marseille, in the south of France. In fact, the study, made from 2018 to the start of 2020, “proposes a methodology, an agenda, and an analysis to portray today’s Marseille”.

MVRDV and The Why Factory Develop a Future "Grand Puzzle" of Marseille for Manifesta 13

Niall Patrick Walsh — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:00:00 +0000

In 2020, the French city of Marseille is set to host Manifesta 13, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art. In preparation for the event, MVRDV has collaborated with thinktank The Why Factory (directed by MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas) in unveiling “The Grand Puzzle,” a 1200-page interdisciplinary pre-biennial research study of the urban potential for Marseille.

MVRDV Designs Multicolored Tetris Hotel for Dutch Design Week 2017

Lindsey Leardi — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Hoping to answer the question "what does the future city look like?" at Dutch Design Week, MVRDV (definitive design and construction drawings) and think tank The Why Factory (Research and concept design) have fabricated a multicolored, tetris-like hotel in Eindhoven. The future brings decreasing resources, increasing population, and climate change, reasons MVRDV, and with these limitations in mind, they believe futuristic architecture needs one important quality: flexibility.

MVRDV's Winy Maas On Architecture Education And His Early Work In Africa

Brendan McGetrick — Fri, 22 May 2015 09:30:30 +0000

Winy Maas is one of architecture’s most aggressive researchers. Through his office MVRDV and affiliations with universities in Europe and America, Maas produces a seemingly unstoppable stream of insights into the environments in which architects now operate. As an advisor to the educational program of the Strelka Institute in Moscow, the architect is currently contributing to the production of eleven radical visions of the future, based on extrapolating trends that shape contemporary life, in Russia and around the world. Maas recently sat with writer, curator, and Strelka faculty member Brendan McGetrick to discuss his unusual educational trajectory, learning from the conservationist Richard Leakey, facing death in Sudan, and the beauty of architects experimenting with algae.

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

Irina Vinnitskaya — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:00:10 +0000

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.

Urban Farming in numbers

David Basulto — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:05:39 +0000

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