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MVRDV also repurposes and regenerates outdated structures through exciting transformations, such as the Pyramid of Tirana, which has been transformed from a showpiece for Albania’s former dictator into a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.

Current projects include high-rises all over the world, from Rotterdam to Guayaquil, and a variety of housing projects in the Netherlands, such as Nieuw Bergen in Eindhoven, and Westerpark West and De Oosterlingen, both in Amsterdam. Among other ongoing projects, MVRDV is currently constructing an exhibition centre in the port of Rotterdam, the transformation of the campus of the Berliner Union Film Ateliers, a residential green oasis named La Serre in Greater Paris, and a new library in Wuhan. MVRDV is also working on large-scale urban masterplans in Bordeaux and Caen, as well as a vision for an Artificial Intelligence Campus in Heilbronn, Germany.

Our research-oriented approach is exemplified by The Why Factory, an independent think tank and research institute that we run together with the Delft University of Technology, which provides an agenda for architecture and urbanism by envisioning the city of the future. This research leads to large-scale studies, such as The Green Dip, a treatise on how to incorporate plants into buildings, (W)ego, an investigation into giving people the freedom to design and build their dream home in the dense city, and Vertical Village, a vision of three-dimensional communities intended to bring back personal autonomy, diversity, flexibility, and neighbourhood life to cities.

MVRDV first published a manifesto of its work and ideas in FARMAX (1998), followed by MetaCity/Datatown (1999), Costa Iberica (2000), Regionmaker (2002), 5 Minutes City (2003), KM3 (2005), Spacefighter (2007) and Skycar City (2007), and the firm’s first monograph of built works MVRDV Buildings (2013, with an updated edition published in 2015). In 2020, MVRDV presented, together with The Why Factory, Le Grand Puzzle, a study with ambitious ideas for Marseille, in collaboration with Manifesta 13. Other recent publications of MVRDV include the Rooftop Catalogue (2021), showing how rooftops can be a solution for the scarcity of space in the city, and the Sea Level Rise Catalogue (2022), offering possible solutions for adapting waterfront buildings and infrastructure to accommodate and absorb encroaching water.