This interview was originally published in IDEAT CHINA X MVRDV, a Special Issue of the magazine from March 2022 which was guest-edited by MVRDV. This interview was conducted by Irene Start.

In the following conversation, MVRDV founding partner Nathalie de Vries and Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout discuss the meeting of two disciplines - art and architecture - and the reclamation of cities by architects. Van Lieshout collaborated with MVRDV during the realisation of Lloyd Hotel, one of MVRDV’s earliest projects. This collaboration between designer and architect allowed for the execution of different levels of artisanship, adding depth and a more intricate story to the project. In this hour-long discussion, Nathalie and Joep draw upon history to make connections between architectural and artistic advancement, place, and time.

Lloyd Hotel. Image © Rob 't Hart

Nathalie: Let’s begin by introducing you to the Chinese readers of IDEAT. Can you tell them what type of artist you are?

Joep: I am an intuitive artist and sculptor. My projects travel between the world of easy-clean design and the non-functional areas of art: sculptures and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias.

Nathalie: In terms of your free work, you create quite dystopian views of the future – whereas in your applied work, you play more with optimism.

Joep: Playfulness is important to me. I am generally very visually oriented, which is why I like working with architects. They have a perfect feeling for space. Collaborations often end in friendships. Although I do have some criticism – I think modern architects make the mistake of only designing the building, not the interior. In previous times, architects were bosses of the entire building: they took care of door handles, curtains, things like that. Nowadays you have an interior architect, a designer, or a marketing company that is responsible for the interior. I feel architects should take back this control. If clients do not let them, they should refuse to design the exterior.

Nathalie: I think we do try to take control, but we have very different trades: an artist gets a budget and after that more freedom to be creative. The Lloyd Hotel is a good example. It started as a hotel for emigrants in the 1920s. In order to open up the claustrophobic interior and create a communal area for tourists and other guests, we carved a void through the volume – the so-called Cultural Embassy. We collaborated with designers and artists to design many of the 120 rooms, including the furniture. You designed 10 of them – some completely, and for some just the bathrooms.

Joep: One of the rooms was a two-storey classical music room. It has a grand piano, a big red spiral staircase and a gigantic bed.

Lloyd Hotel. Image © Rob 't Hart

Nathalie: By inviting artists and designers to contribute to the Lloyd Hotel's rooms, we created different levels of artisanship. This allowed for significant differences, specificities and uniqueness as well. In some architectural projects, this artisanship does indeed get lost, especially when you have many pre-fabricated parts. By labelling parts of the building as design or art, we could add a budget we did not have for the more generic rooms.

Joep: This also has to do with the growing dependency on contractors.

Nathalie: Nowadays, as architects, we are working in a hyper-commercial environment. The focus of building is narrowing down too often on repetition, customisation, and budget. Only by taking more control over the building process can architects reintroduce craftsmanship.

Joep: If you go back into history, architecture was very much related to art. I mean, any building from the 19th century has sculptured facades and decorative elements, like horses on the rooftop. Abstract artists like Picasso set us back, and now artists are only asked to create work for museums!

Nathalie: But we – or you – are able to bring it back! If we, as architects, collaborate with artists as we did for the Lloyd Hotel, we could bring in a storyline, a narrative to the building. In a recent transformation of a 19th-century listed building on the Słodowa Island in Wrocław, Poland, we proposed to create large murals. The client found a young, upcoming artist from Poland. She created large works about the history of the city, but from her own personal perspective. So coming back to what Joep said before: I don’t think architects need to control everything, as we already use light and space to create an experience. We direct the way people behave in buildings, how they move. However, it is true that there is something incredibly abstract and neutral about contemporary architecture. You can almost begin to lose touch with the real world. What I like about Joep’s work as an artist is that he presents people as complete, with different needs and different ways to express themselves.

Alicja Biala painting her mural at Concordia Design Wrocław. Image © Dorota Kwiatkowska

Joep: It would indeed be great if, in contemporary architecture, more attention would be directed towards that.

Nathalie: I wonder if people truly always want fully transparent buildings. In my opinion, you need closed-off spaces, a little darkness, corners where you can hide. Our design for the Lloyd Hotel is almost a metaphor for liberty - we opened up an emigrant hotel and former prison. The concept was to make the rooms as diverse as people are, and make it so that in each room are plenty of things to do. So, in the end, rooms were not just for tourists, but also for local people.

Joep: I think it is important for developers and architects to include an artist at a very early stage to involve them in the design and planning processes. I do see a bigger interest in art from the side of developers for their projects, but they don’t really involve us, and artists are often severely underpaid.

Nathalie: Is this the reason you wanted to develop your own neighbourhood, Brutus, in the harbour of Rotterdam? You created buildings on your own land, and you organised all kinds of arts-related activities. You even promoted young artists, in such a way that you became a benefactor or a patron - you offered a roof to all those people, a free haven.

Joep: True, I made sure to create a space with which I could do whatever I want. The name of the complex refers to Brutalism, an Expressionist architectural style from the 1950s and 1960s that promoted no-nonsense honesty and a utopian ideal of society. In this project, art and commerce are equal partners. Creatives are not called in as temporary "place-makers" who make the location attractive for development. In Brutus, homes and museums combine to form a new kind of gesamtkunstwerk. Every step brings a new confrontation. Every two steps, a new insight. The focus is on large-scale and immersive installations, the type of work that an increasing number of museums consider too expensive and risky. At ExpoBrutus, artists are challenged to excel in an XXL format.

Nathalie: So you are completely in control this time?

Joep: Yes, we are the bosses of the situation; I really wanted to control the look and feel of the interior as much as the exterior. I will remain the owner of the buildings, and the rent which I will receive, I will invest in the museum.

Nathalie: What interests me about this project is how you will deal with unpredictability. Will you step away from conventional interior architecture and typical floorplans? Or will you pursue standard commercial values attached to the apartments? How will they differ from ordinary, market-driven developments?

Joep: I have to deal with that of course. For myself, I like open loft spaces, but there will always be people who prefer five-bedroom apartments.

Nathalie: One of the things I see as an important feature of architecture is undetermined space. Undetermined buildings can be used for many different purposes; you aren’t stuck in functions and rooms that can only be used in a certain way. This is where Brutus becomes challenging - you are fundamentally changing conventions.

It could be the start of an ideal city. If we zoom out: we are living in an era of extreme transparency. Architects start to put in all kinds of smart devices like cameras so we can see, listen to, and register our behaviour all the time. Your work is the opposite, which I find fascinating. You create darkness, tunnels, and areas where you are not constantly watched or overseen. So this is the value of collaborating with artists: not only in a sense of one person making the building and the other person adding a bit of art, but really thinking about the role of culture and art in our environment.

Joep: Yes, another example are churches. Until the sixties, they asked artists to produce work for their interiors; tapestries and the like. That completely disappeared.

Nathalie: Well I think this is a universal issue. Not just in Europe, but a worldwide phenomenon. If I think back to our Polish artist (Alicja Biala) who made murals that reflected the history of the city for the Concordia design… I don’t think the building and artwork can exist without the other. Together, they tell a story. The Markthal in Rotterdam has also become unimaginable without the artwork "Horn of Plenty" that is portrayed on the ceiling. I think the rooms you designed for the Lloyd Hotel certainly left an impression on the people visiting the hotel.

Joep I agree! And I can imagine collaborating again - I was actually thinking of inviting MVRDV for a few development projects. I think I have to scale up in order to achieve more.

Close-up of Alicja Biala mural at Concordia Design Wrocław. © Dorota Kwiatkowska 

Nathalie: I also believe that you have developed over the years. You became more of a partner instead of a creator on behalf of someone else.

Joep: There was an important reason for that: in the beginning of a project everyone is enthusiastic and excited, everything is new. When the building is ready, everyone is exhausted, the construction is over budget and there are details to be fixed etcetera. And then the artist comes in…

Nathalie: Now you sound pessimistic! I don’t think we have ever collaborated in such a way, correct?

Joep: [laughs] I want to be at the forefront, to be included from the start.

Nathalie: That can be a game-changer. I think this talk can be read also as a mutual invitation to unite the rules of thinking again between architect and artist. In a way, we should be partners in crime, and not part of completely different circles or bubbles.

Joep: Exactly! Together you can achieve so much more!