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MVRDV: The Latest Architecture and News

BIG, MVRDV, Snøhetta to Compete for San Pellegrino Flagship Factory Redesign

Sparkling Natural Mineral Water company San Pellegrino has announced an international competition between 4 top architecture firms for the redesign of its flagship factory and bottling plant, located at the source of the mineral water, San Pellegrino Terme, Italy.

“This exciting endeavor aims to celebrate the heritage, special source and terroir of S.Pellegrino, while also promoting new standards of efficiency, environmental sustainability and compliance. Further, this project will support the revitalization of the historic region, harkening back to the golden age of San Pellegrino Terme, at the height of the Belle Époque, when the town served as an exclusive destination for European aristocracy,” a spokesperson for San Pellegrino said in a press release.

MVRDV's "Golden Spot" Brightens Up Design for Seoul Entertainment Complex

MVRDV has announced plans for Paradise City, a 9,800 square meter entertainment plaza near Incheon Airport in Seoul, South Korea. Designer in partnership with Gansam Architects, the complex will consist of two monolithic forms housing retail and a nightclub, and new public spaces. The connecting element of the project is a giant golden spot at the public square, which the architects hope will become a beacon visible to tourists as they fly into the city.

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An MVRDV-Designed Library Tops Out in Tianjin

An MVRDV-designed library in Tianjin has topped out as part of the city’s Binhai Cultural Centre. The 34,200 square meter (370,000 square foot) building will join four other cultural institutions designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects, Bing Thom Architects, HH Design, and GMP – creating “cultural corridors” – that are part of a GMP-designed masterplan. The library program includes educational facilities, service spaces, book storage, archives, computer rooms, audio rooms, an auditorium, lounge areas, meeting rooms, offices, general reading areas, and those designed specifically for children and the elderly. Tianjin Binhai Library has been designed by MVRDV in collaboration with the TIanjin Urban Planning and Design Institute (TUPDI).

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MVRDV Designs a Kitchen with Complete Transparency

MVRDV has designed a fully transparent kitchen for Kitchen Home Project, a satellite event at this year’s Venice Biennale, focusing on living and the home environment. Kitchen Home Project was initiated by Weng Ling of the Beijing Centre for the Arts (BCA), and also features works by Kengo Kuma and the Hong Kong-based media artist Au Yeung Ying Chai. MVRDV’s proposal, “Infinity Kitchen,” imagines the next stage of kitchen design, creating counters, shelving, cabinets, and faucets entirely out of glass – the metaphor being that a see-through environment will add greater transparency to the food being made in the kitchen, and make inhabitants more aware food choices, cleanliness, and the culinary experience.

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Experience MVRDV's "The Stairs" in Rotterdam with #donotsettle

In the newest video by architects Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost of YouTube’s #donotsettle, the duo visit MVRDV’s "The Stairs" installed outside Centraal Station in Rotterdam. The project commemorates the 75th anniversary of the city’s reconstruction after World War II by devising the staircase now attached to the Groot Handelsgebouw, a landmark and one of Rotterdam’s first post-war buildings. In the video, Pratomo and Provoost discuss the idea of temporariness, experience-driven architecture, context, and symbolism inspired by MVRDV’s intervention, all the while asking other visitors for their own reactions to the spectacle.

MVRDV Unveil Monumental Urban Staircase in the Center of Rotterdam

A little over a month since Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV announced a new temporary urban structure—a 180-step staircase, 29 meters tall and 57 meters long—for the heart of city of Rotterdam, the project has been officially opened. Those who ascend the staircase will find a temporary observation deck looking over Rotterdam Centraal, a rooftop bar, and the temporary reopening of the Kriterion cinema that was last active in the 1960s.

MVRDV Designs Reusable Pavilion for Bogotá Book Fair

MVRDV’s design for the Dutch exhibition “Hola Holanda” at the Book Fair of Bogotá (FILBO) features a modular system of crates that will be repurposed as neighbourhood libraries after the Book Fair ends. Avoiding the waste of resources created by one-time pavilions, the Dutch firm has introduced a playful element of sustainability to the fair, maintaining its spirit even after the event ends.

MVRDV and COBE's Museum of Rock Opens in the Danish City of Roskilde

A new museum dedicated to rock, pop and youth culture will open today in the Danish city of Roskilde. Designed collaboratively by Dutch-based practice MVRDV and Copenhagen-based COBE Ragnarock, as it is to be known, has been described by its designers as "oozing rock’n’roll attitude, with its golden exterior and velvety red interior." The museum is part of ROCKmagneten, a masterplan for the site of a former concrete factory which COBE and MVRDV won together in 2011. The area has since been designated as a creative and cultural neighborhood and the museum, which is now at the heart of this transformation, is set to be open to the public all year round.

MVRDV Partners with Traumhaus to Reinvent Affordable Living in the Suburbs

MVRDV and Traumhaus, a producer of low-cost, high-quality homes based on standardized elements, have teamed up to develop a 27,000 square meter project redeveloping former US Army barracks in Mannheim, Germany.

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MVRDV to Install a 180-Step Urban Staircase Outside Rotterdam's Central Station

Rotterdam—the original "tabula rasa" city—will soon become host to a giant staircase, ascending 180 steps from Stationsplein (outside Rotterdam Central Station’s iconic entrance) to the top of the world-renowned Groot Handelsgebouw building. According to MVRDV, the structure will "follow in the city's tradition of celebrating reconstruction milestones" and, as such, the scaffolding system used to construct the staircase will be "a nod" to the 75th anniversary of the rebuilding of the city following World War II.

Lecture: MVRDV Jacob van Rijs Innovative Housing

This event is the third of a series of international programs highlighting exemplary housing design around the world. MVRDV was founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The practice engages globally in providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues. A highly collaborative, research-based design method involves clients, stakeholders. and experts from a wide range of fields from early on in the creative process. The results are exemplary, outspoken projects that enable our cities and landscapes to develop towards a better future.

Monocle 24 Talk to MVRDV and Malcolm Reading About the Architectural Competition

The latest edition of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, examines the architectural competition: "a critically important but less visible facet of the architectural world." Monocle's Henry Rees-Sheridan talks to Jacob van Rijs, co-founder of MVRDV, about how the practice incorporates unbuilt plans and competition entries into its business model; Malcolm Reading, head of "the leading independent organiser of architectural competitions in the UK," about what goes into creating a successful architecture competition; and ArchDaily Editor James Taylor-Foster about how the unbuilt world affects the built.

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In Defense of Renders and Trees On Top of Skyscrapers

In a recent article on Vice (in Dutch) and on his research platform website Failed Architecture, architecture writer Mark Minkjan comments on the phenomenon of architectural renders, arguing that “digital visualizations and hollow sales pitches hide the ugly sides of architecture.” In the article, Minkjan takes MVRDV's proposal for Ravel Plaza in Amsterdam as a “case study” to discuss the misleading quality of the render. This criticism – of renders in general and MVRDV's renders specifically – is a returning point of critique: on ArchDaily in 2013, Tim De Chant begged in an opinion piece “Can We Please Stop Drawing Trees on Top of Skyscrapers?” Though that article did not mention MVRDV in the text, our Peruri88 project in Jakarta was given the dubious distinction of being the article's most prominent image.

We'd like to discuss this common critique. The point of the role of visualizations in our communication is relevant but, even though we fully understand where the criticism comes from, arguments such as these are in our opinion not correct.

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MVRDV Designs Shopping Center with Pearlescent Façade in Beijing

Exterior construction has almost wrapped up on MVRDV’s Chongwenmen M-Cube shopping center in Beijing, featuring a shimmering façade that changes color from grey to pearlescent. The approximately 40,000 square meter center sits in the central Chongwenmen district, just moments from the Forbidden City, and will serve as a centralized hub for retail, cuisine and leisure. The project is set to be completed in summer of this year.

MVRDV Releases New Images of 600 Hectare "La Grande Mosaïque" Masterplan in Caen

After two years of further development, MVRDV has released new images of their masterplan for Caen in Normandy, "La Grande Mosaïque." The masterplan, which was first revealed in May 2013, re-envisions a 600 hectare area of the center of Caen and the Caen Peninsula, connecting the city to the neighboring towns of Hérouville Saint-Clair and Mondeville.

The design attempts to counter the effects of the area's de-industrialization, integrating historic and environmental elements of the area into the new masterplan. The release of these new images also marks the opening of an exhibition of the design, which will be on public display in "Le Pavillon" in the old city port until the 13th March 2016 in an attempt to engage local residents.

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MVRDV Wins Competition to Build An Urban Lagoon in Taiwan

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Courtesy of MVRDV. Image © APLUS CG

MVRDV, working alongside The Urbanist Collective and LLJ Architects, has been selected in a competition to transform downtown Tainan in Taiwan with their design for new green corridor and urban lagoon connecting the city to its waterfront. Transforming the area of Tainan known as the T-axis, the design will see the city's Haian Road turned into a public park and connected to the city's canal by demolishing the existing China-Town Mall, a commercial structure built alongside the canal in 1983 and described by MVRDV as a "rotten tooth of downtown Tainan."

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MVRDV's Reflective 'Wunderkammer' in Rotterdam is Given the Green Light

Rotterdam will soon have a new cabinet of curiosities to add to its collection of architectural icons. For many years the city's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, originally established in 1849, has required a safer space to house its world-class collection of painting, sculpture and prints – a collection which is said to have a total value of €7billion ($7.5billion). Last week the Municipality of Rotterdam voted in favour of the building’s construction and, with zoning approved, "the world’s first fully accessible art storage facility" is now slated to open its doors in 2018.

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MVRDV Transfer Early Work to the Archives of Rotterdam's Nieuwe Instituut

Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV have begun a transfer of their early work, spanning fifteen years from 1993 to 2008, to Het Nieuwe Instituut — the central architecture archive of The Netherlands. This collection, which will eventually be made available to the public, will be in the institute's first primarily digital donation (approximately eight terabytes of data) and consisting of material from 400 of the practice's 680 total projects, including the Villa VPRO, the Silodam in Amsterdam, and the Markthal Rotterdam, as well as unrealised projects such as Meta City Datatown, Pig City, and 3D City Cube.