MVRDV announced today that Jeroen Zuidgeest, Partner, will leave the practice at the end of March 2018 and a search is underway for a new head of department. Jeroen joined MVRDV in 1999 as an architect and became a project leader, head of department and partner whilst working on many significant urban planning and architecture projects.
In early 2016, the growing organization of MVRDV was restructured and Jeroen Zuidgeest was made partner heading the Strategic Planning Department, overseeing masterplanning, architectural projects and development strategies.
“Jeroen was a key co-developer of our urban strategies and thoughts”, says Winy Maas, founding partner at MVRDV.
“We are grateful to the many years he devoted to the well-being of MVRDV on content and organizational level, with his contribution on the development of challenging and prestigious projects on a more abstract level, to the future of the city, as designer, head of department and partner,” explains Jacob van Rijs, founding partner at MVRDV. “We will part as friends with great mutual respect, and besides, I myself left a bigger firm once to start up MVRDV with Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries.”
After spending nearly two decades at MVRDV Jeroen is currently in the process of handing over projects. He ends his years at MVRDV in great harmony and stays on as a freelancer for a number of projects until they reach a logical point for handover.
“It’s been a fantastic, challenging and intense 18 years in which I developed professionally and saw many projects being realised,” says Jeroen Zuidgeest. “It is time to follow my personal drive and start my own practice to work on new realities for our future environment.”
MVRDV today is a stable, healthy company with set growth ambitions and a global portfolio realized by 210 creative minds spread over three offices in Rotterdam, Shanghai and Paris. Its portfolio ranges from private homes to large-scale urban planning, and every scale in-between. Currently, more than 800.000m2 of projects are under construction worldwide.