MVRDV Buildings - by Ilka Ruby & Andreas Ruby (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

MVRDV is a Rotterdam-based architecture and urban design practice founded in 1993 (its name is an acronym for founding members Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries). In cooperation with Ilka and Andreas Ruby, MVRDV assembled a monographic overview of 20 years of architectural practice, MVRDV Buildings, now available in a new, updated edition. Featuring user testimonies, journalistic articles, and previously unpublished images and drawings, MVRDV Buildings surveys the realized work to date of one of the world's top architecture bureaus. Acclaimed for its visionary research and thought-provoking projects such as Pig City (a high-rise landscape designed to solve lack-of-space problems for the pig meat industry in the Netherlands) and Grand Paris (a proposal to join Paris and its suburbs into a high-density "post-Kyoto city" by 2030), MVRDV has realized a stunning portfolio of buildings and urban plans. This volume includes MVRDV's famous projects, such as Villa VPRO (Hilversum), WoZoCo (Amsterdam), Balancing Barn (Suffolk, UK) and Edificio Mirador (Madrid), and explores these with a characteristically inquisitive attitude. How do these buildings perform? What is life like in a blue house (in Didden Village, near Rotterdam), on an orange tribune (The Why Factory, situated within a courtyard at Delft University of Technology), in a vertical shopping street (the Gyre Shopping Center in Tokyo) or inside a mountain of books (the Book Mountain library in Spijkenisse)?

Review Quotes

Having cemented its reputation as an international architecture household name, MVRDV has achieved a stunning portfolio of urban planning and architectural perfectionism. This volume includes some of MVRDV's most famous projects, including Villa VPRO (Hilversum), WoZoCo (Amsterdam), Balancing Barn (Suffolk, UK), and explores each with a cunning inquisitiveness characteristic of the bureau, showcasing in the process the eerie and wonderful colours life can take in these spatial artifices.-- "Trendesign Magazine"

Instead of project descriptions by the architect, interviews and visits to the buildings form the basis of the texts, accompanied by clear and easy-to understand drawings of the buildings as they were built. MVRDV also tried hard to find existing photographs of the buildings as they are in use today, rather than commissioning new photographs of emptied spaces. Designer Joost Grootens contributed to this idea by collecting as many amateur photographs of the buildings as he could find, showing what users, visitors and passers-by think is notable, or beautiful, about the works. Clients, users and friends on social media were asked for their collaboration. The making of the book became something of an MVRDV: Revisited, a suitable celebration of the office's 20-year anniversary.-- "DAFNE"

MVRDV Buildings is a brilliant, quietly radical monograph-- "arcspace.com"