MVRDV ::: Edificio Mirador, Madrid, Spain ::: Book selection
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An attempt to understand the contemporary city at a moment when globalisation has exploded its scale beyond our grasp. Abandoning topography,ideology, representation, and context, the authors resort to pure data to discover what agenda for architecture and urbanism a numerical approach could provoke. ©Amazon.com
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From a converted printing house in Rotterdam and the experimental minds therein that brought you the Pig City project (an analysis of the pork industry's manufacturing conditions) comes KM3, another contribution from the iconoclastic idea lab and architecture firm MVRDV. The office, which for more than a decade has been studying density as it relates to contemporary life and architecture, bases its theories for the uses of space on complexly crunched data. Classic projects include the gravity-defying WoZoCo home for the eldery in Amsterdam, the headquarters for public broadcasting company VPRO in Hilversum, the Dutch pavilion for World Expo 2000 in Hanover, and the Housing Silo in Amsterdam. The firm's buildings overthrow the primacy of an architectural "footprint" for more innovative and varied spatial paradigms. A follow-up to the publication of FARMAX, which sought to question and analyze the growing suburban "greyness" of the Netherlands and to propose new ways of thinking about the homogenization of landscape, KM3 extends that idea to a three-dimensional model, one that "generates space instead of consuming it" and encourages variety in form. The book explores three different strategies each in Rotterdam and Amsterdam on their spatial and technical capacity for creating a "3D city," one of cantilevers and underground connections, airiness and, most of all, diverse spaces. This is thinking at the forefront of a new urbanism. Hardcover, 6 x 8.25 in./1200 pgs / Illustrated throughout. ©Amazon.com
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Design research in the form of a book is what "Nordic Enterprise" provides. This volume from the high-profile Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, presents three of their projects, each covered extremely thoroughly with sketches, plans, computer-generated models, and photography, along with extensive written documentation concerning the site, as well as the design challenges, functions, and ideas for the particular project. The three projects published here are a plan for the rearranging of the city of Oslo, Norway, the headquarters for the Swedish postal service, and the new Oslo opera house. The unique aspect of this book, the first in a series of planned project books from MVRDV, is that, unlike traditional architectural analysis, it is produced by the design office itself. Therefore, we get a much more detailed explication, in both words and images, of the intentions and theories behind the various design choices that were made for each project. A revealing document by and about one of the world's most active and innovative architecture firms. ©Amazon.com
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Since the beginning of the last century, the Ruhr Area has been the industrial heart of Germany. With the demise of the coal, iron and steel industries, the region now faces an existential question: growth or shrinkage? This dichotomy is the point of departure for the development of various future scenarios, and it is from here that MVRDV, the celebrated Rotterdam-based architectural firm, developed its structural exploration on the future of the Rhine-Ruhr region, implemented in cooperation with a number of German and Netherlandish universities. Extensively documented in this book, the study presents a compact commentary on the meaning of region, identity and tradition, issues ever more consciously present in the age of globalization. Also in this volume is MVRDV's pavilion for Hannover EXPO 2000. The firm caused a stir with its design for the Dutch pavilion, whose motto, "Holland Creates Space," was skillfully translated into a façade-free building with stacked-up landscapes. ©Amazon.com
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40 buildings and designs from the MVRDV offices and conversations with the founders Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries form a seminal monograph of MVRDV. Projects featured range from a definition of radicalism to, one of their first assignments, the church in Barendrecht, to the WOZOCO’s apartments for elderly in Amsterdam-Osdorp, and their latest designs such as Barcode House intended for Munich and the Patio Houses for Ypenburg (NL). ©Amazon.com