MVRDV

MVRDV was founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Now, the three founding partners lead a dynamic and optimistic team of over 300 alongside partners Frans de Witte, Fokke Moerel, Wenchian Shi, Jan Knikker, and Bertrand Schippan. Based in Rotterdam, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin, and New York, we have a global scope, providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues in all regions of the world. Our 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.

The work of MVRDV is exhibited and published worldwide and has received numerous international awards. More than three hundred architects, designers and urbanists develop projects in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative design process that involves rigorous technical and creative investigation. MVRDV has an in-house Climate Team, which consults with design teams across the entire company to ensure the sustainability and resilience of our work. As a group of specialists, MVRDV NEXT develops and implements computational workflows and new technologies to rationalise designs, speed up processes, and make projects more efficient and adaptable in the face of change.

The products of MVRDV’s unique approach to design vary, ranging from buildings of all types and sizes, to urban plans and visions, numerous publications, installations, and exhibitions. The firm has a reputation for designing innovative, unexpected, and joyful mixed-use buildings such as the Markthal, a combination of housing and retail in Rotterdam, Radio Hotel and Tower, a brightly coloured leisure and office tower complex in New York City, and Valley, three dramatic, nature-inspired, plant-covered towers in Amsterdam. Renowned housing projects by MVRDV include the Silodam housing complex in Amsterdam, courtyard apartment building Ilot Queyries in Bordeaux, and The Canyon, based on Californian rock formations, in San Francisco.

MVRDV also repurposes and regenerates outdated structures through exciting transformations, such as the Pyramid of Tirana, which has been transformed from a showpiece for Albania’s former dictator into a cultural hub providing free education to the country’s youth, as well as the mixed-use Concordia Design in Wrocław, the offices of the Idea Factory in Shenzhen, and shopping centres Gaîté Montparnasse in Paris and La Part-Dieu in Lyon. In terms of cultural buildings, MVRDV is celebrated for the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the world’s first fully accessible art depot, as well as the Tianjin Binhai Library, Book Mountain in Spijkenisse, and the transformation of the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam. On an urban scale, MVRDV’s acclaimed projects include the Seoullo 7017 Skygarden, a true plant village realised on a former inner-city highway, and the transformation of a former shopping mall into an urban lagoon in Tainan, as well as temporary installations that transform the way we experience cities, such as the Rotterdam Rooftop Walk and Stairs to Kriterion.