Berlin – where it all began. MVRDV presents its German oeuvre in an exhibition especially designed for the Architektur Galerie Berlin, MVRDV Haus Berlin, which is partly conceived as a 'working office' and thus provides an insight into past and current projects. For this purpose, the exhibits will be shown in a monochrome orange ambiance in the style of MVRDV House Rotterdam. The exhibition will open on 9 July and run through 22 August 2020.

Set both in contrast and in connection to its past - and in signature wall-to-wall orange monochrome - MVRDV adapts to present challenges to generate new and provocative solutions, inviting visitors into the MVRDV Haus Berlin to take a closer look at the German projects that have helped to shape the practice.

As the office’s seminal effort, Europan 1991 winner Berlin Voids, encapsulates ideas that have come to define MVRDV’s work as a practice, so the return to Berlin is both practical and symbolic. “When we competed in Europan,” says founding partner Jacob Van Rijs, “we were radical. Whether or not the project would be built was not our main priority.” Soon the bold designs of the newly founded MVRDV office were implemented in Germany: The equally radical and impressive proposal for the Dutch pavilion at EXPO2000 became an icon on the Expo site in Hannover; a stack of landscapes.

But there is much more architecture by MVRDV in Germany, some of it only on paper, but some of it realized. For example, the Unterföhring Park Village completed shortly after Expo2000 or the recently completed Werk12 in Munich, designs currently in progress such as the KoolKiel development and Kreativquartier Potsdam, and projects under construction such as Phase 2 of Hamburg Innovation Port and Zollhafen Mainz. More than 60 projects from 28 years of creative work will be on display in the Architektur Galerie Berlin, which has been converted into the MVRDV Haus Berlin, with models, plans and photographs.

A team of MVRDV’s architects working on German projects will transform part of the exhibition into a real office. A ‘working office’, which gives visitors an insight into the working methods, which now employs 250 people in its offices in Rotterdam, Paris, Shanghai and, from autumn onwards, in Berlin.

MVRDV Haus Berlin is on display at the Architektur Galerie Berlin (located at Karl-Marx-Allee 96) from July 9th until August 22nd.