MVRDV Proposes A Tower of Life-Size Stacked “Building” Blocks
Lower base of structure from the ground (Courtesy MVRDV)
Dutch architecture office MVRDV has placed a bid to create a 1,300-foot-tall skyscraper in Jakarta, Indonesia called Peruri 88. The complex arrangement of edifices, which resembles a city’s worth of buildings stacked atop one another along the lines of a massive assembly of life-size “building” blocks covered with greenery, is MVRDV’s answer to Jakarta’s need for densification and green space.
Unveiled> MVRDV Designs a City of Flowers in the Netherlands
(Courtesy MVRDV)
A fantastical sounding urban garden paradise imagined by Rotterdam-based MVRDV and made up of jasmine hotels, lily pond swimming pools, offices decked with planted interiors and bamboo parks, and an alphabetized plant library will be brought to reality over the next ten years in the city of Almere, Netherlands. Today, the Nederlandse Tuinbouwraad (NTR) chose MVRDV’s plan for Almere as the winner of the esteemed Floriade 2022 World Horticulture Expo, which takes place only once every ten years. The blanket of new city fabric draped over a 111-acre peninsula will transform it into a permanent green extension directly opposite Almere’s existing city center.
On View> MVRDV Reconsiders Rapid Urbanization with a Vertical Village
(Courtesy MVRDV)
As East Asian cities continue to modernize and densify, monotonous and dehumanizing blocks tend to replace the finely-grained, small-scale architecture and urbanism such as Beijing’s Hutong, Tokyo’s small wooden houses, and Singapore’s traditional villages. These “urban ecologies that have evolved over the course of centuries,” as Dutch firm MVRDV explains, foster a social interconnectivity in these communities, forming the basis for a new exhibition currently on view in Seoul, South Korea.
Americans Storm Over MVRDV’s Clouded Vision
Rendering of the Cloud (Courtesy MVRDV)
Guy Horton, a frequent contributor to AN, here adds his thoughts on the still-steaming controversy over MVRDV’s twin towers.
MVRDV’s design for what they call The Cloud, a twin high-rise with a connecting “cloud” above the waistline, has resulted in an blitz of negative criticism. Americans who have never heard of the Dutch firm are now phoning and emailing threats and condemnation non-stop—some are personal threats aimed at individuals. They have even been called “Al Qaeda lovers.”
MVRDV Responds to Cloud Tower Imagery
An early concept rendering of the Cloud tower and a rendering of the final design released last week. (Courtesy MVRDV)
It must have been a rough day at MVRDV’s Rotterdam offices after their newly unveiled Cloud tower set to be built in Seoul, South Korea went viral in a bad way. MVRDV envisioned two towers shrouded in pixelated mist, but others saw the image of a plane hitting the World Trade Center in New York, half a world away. MVRDV released the following statement on their Facebook page along with an early conceptual drawing showing the inspiration for the tower, in a much more literal cloud:
A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse.
MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11, it was not our intention.
The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city. It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, the design was not meant to provoke this.
Check out all of the renderings over here. What do you think? Is this too reminiscent of the Twin Towers? Do you see a cloud or an explosion frozen in time?
Unveiled> Seoul Cloud by MVRDV
Rendering of the Cloud at night. (Courtesy MVRDV)
Seoul’s Yongsan International Business District, a new district designed to lift the city’s architectural appeal as an international business destination, is filled with wild promises: the world’s second tallest tower (‘Dream Tower’) to be completed by 2016, the Libeskind-designed, 28-trillion-won ($22.6-billion) ’Dreamhub’ project, and now MVRDV’s The Cloud.
QUICK CLICKS> Denver, Dyker, Dijon, and Mad Ave
Denver's new Clyfford Still Museum by Allied Works will house 2,400 artworks.
Still Life. Fast Company previews Brad Cloepfil/Allied Works Architecture’s design for a new 28,000 square foot Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, which will hold 2,400 works from the artist’s estate. Suzanne LaBarre writes that Still’s will stipulated “that his estate be given, in its entirety, to an American city willing to establish a permanent museum dedicated solely to his artwork.”
Melting Pot. Bloomberg reports that, based on latest Census numbers, New York is back to being the most diverse city in the U.S., beating out L.A. The Italian-American Brooklyn neighborhood of Dyker Heights takes the prize for the biggest shift, with a 31% increase in Asian residents since the last Census.
Scan this! In case you missed it, this week MVRDV released renderings for a mustard factory turned call center in Dijon, France, with an intriguing facade composed of QR tags, via Bustler.
New Mad Men. Tommy Hilfiger and his real estate partners buy the old Met Life clock tower on Madison Avenue with plans to convert it into a hotel, writes The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, in the Meatpacking neighborhood, Hilfiger’s weird preppy pop-up cottage stays up through Sunday.
Unveiled>Amanora Apartment City by MVRDV
Phase one of MVRDV's Amanora Apartment City in Pune, India (all images courtesy MVRDV).
Like its neighbor to the northeast, India is urbanizing at break-neck speed. Much of the resulting development takes the shape of monotonous towers and slabs designed to house the maximum number people as quickly as possible. The innovative Dutch firm MVRDV’s project Amanora Apartment City punches through, twists, and slices off pieces of a monolithic superstructure, to create a new park-side landmark within a largely undifferentiated urban field.
Pictorial: Le Monolithe by MVRDV
Le Monolithe in Lyon, France (Courtesy MVRDV)
MVRDV just completed “Le Monolithe,” a mixed-use project in Lyon, France featuring social housing, apartments, disabled residences, offices, and retail organized along a central exterior axis of courtyards. The 350,000 square foot structure overlooks the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers and represents a collaboration of several architects and landscape architects.
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