On our website and social media, MVRDV is dedicating March to the theme of urbanism. Cities – and more broadly, human-designed landscapes of all types – are an issue that connects with many of the most important social conversations of our era. Sustainability, resilience, housing, economics, density, diversity, democracy, technology – all of these topics and more are involved in an engagement with the principles of urbanism.

Though MVRDV was founded as an architecture firm, our design approach has always had a fundamentally urbanist outlook. This can be seen in early projects, such as the Expo 2000 pavilion, which created a synthesis between building and landscape in order to showcase a country making the most out of limited space, just as it could be seen in early research projects such as MetaCity/DataTown and publications such as Farmax and KM3.

Building on this legacy, MVRDV now includes a specialised urbanism studio, and both our urban designers and architects leverage a variety of project types to communicate our urban ideals such as density, humanity, sustainability, and nature. We infuse our urbanistic values into projects of every scale and every type: from forward-thinking masterplans such as Bastide-Niel and Hyde Park, to incremental, community-centred processes such as in Overschild; from self-initiated pro-bono design work conducted for cities as diverse as The Hague and New Delhi, to formal appointments as city supervisor in places such as Eindhoven; and from regional consultation plans spanning entire countries to temporary installations that imply new ways for citizens to think about the city.

With #Urbanism Month, MVRDV hopes to shed some light on these urban values, showcasing the best of our urban-oriented projects of all types. Through both the content on our own platforms, as well as conversations started with our followers and with colleagues from other organisations, we hope to lead a conversation about urbanism, revealing the types of human environment we wish to see in the future.

You can take part by following MVRDV on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or by following and using the hashtags #Urbanism and #MVRDVurbanism.