Founding partner/principal architect, urban planner, and landscape designer, leading MVRDV since 1993

Education: Delft University of Technology, Architecture and Urban Planning, RHSTL, Boskoop, landscape architecture

Memberships: BNA, FRIBA, FAIA, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland

Awards: Order of the Dutch Lion (the Netherlands), Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (France)

Winy Maas (Schijndel, NL - 1959), Founding Partner, Urban Planner and Landscape Architect, has led MVRDV’s interdisciplinary team since its establishment in 1993. Co-founded with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, the award-winning Dutch practice has achieved international acclaim for a wide variety of buildings, cities, and landscapes that are innovative, experimental, and merge theory with practice. 

Driven by this dedication to green, user-defined, sustainable cities and spaces, Maas’ leadership drives many of the office’s award-winning projects. These include the Dutch Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Villa VPRO in Hilversum (1997), WoZoCo in Amsterdam (1997), Rotterdam’s Markthal (2014), Crystal Houses in Amsterdam (2016), the Tianjin Binhai Library (2017), the Glass Farm in Schijndel (2013), Radio Hotel and Tower in New York (2022), Valley in Amsterdam (2022) and the first publicly accessible art depot in the world, Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, which opened its doors end of 2021. In Maas’ broad portfolio are also several masterplans, including a vision for the future of Greater Paris, the Left Bank in Bordeaux, and the waterfront of Oslo. Maas also designed and supervised the world horticultural exhibition Floriade 2022 and supervised Eindhoven city centre from 2017 until 2022.

Maas balances practice with academic leadership. Besides his work for MVRDV, he is Professor of Urbanism and Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. In 2008, he developed The Why Factory, a research institute that he leads within TU Delft, which explores possibilities for the development of cities of the future. In 2022, Maas was appointed visiting professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague.

His academic work also includes numerous visiting professorships at internationally notable institutions including the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Columbia University in New York, the Strelka Institute in Moscow, Hong Kong University, the Rotterdam Building Academy, and the Czech Technical University. 

Besides the many awards MVRDV’s projects have received, in 2015 Maas was appointed to the Order of the Dutch Lion by the Dutch government. In 2011, the Government of France awarded him with the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his work characterised by experimentation, innovation, and sustainability.

“I advocate denser, greener, more attractive and liveable cities, with an approach to design that centres around user-defined, innovative, and sustainable ideas for the built environment, regardless of typology or scale.'' - Winy Maas