Netherlands: The Latest Architecture and News

In the world of contemporary architecture and design trends, the topic of biophilia is ruthlessly spreading itself across floor plans, mood boards, and finished interiors like butter on hot toast. So talk of outdoor spaces with natural materials, fresh air, natural light, and expansive views may seem like a broken record, but sometimes you just want to keep on pressing repeat. Also like butter on hot toast, you can never have too much of a good thing.

These outdoor bathroom spaces open themselves up, both figuratively and literally, to outdoor environments in a variety of worldwide climates, without forgetting their main purpose: to provide a sanctuary of comfortable calm, in a stressful world.

MVRDV has joined the Van Gogh Homeland Foundation to develop the first Van Gogh Homeland Biennale to bring awareness to the challenges faced by the Brabant region. At the initiative of Midpoint Brabant, the experience strives to combine knowledge of architecture, landscape design, and sustainability to reignite enthusiasm for the Brabant landscape, Vincent van Gogh;s native Dutch province. According to the organisers, the region is facing a number of threats, including the increasing number of floods and the limited availability of space, but, through an orchestrated effort, the landscape that inspired van Gogh 150 years ago can become more sustainable and greener in the future.

Designed by Mecanoo, Amstel Design District is a mixed-use development that includes social housing, mid-rent residential spaces, private sector homes, and collective facilities. The 80,000 square meters master plan also provides spaces for creative offices and retail, along with cultural institutions such as the 800 square meters design museum. Located between the highway and the metro line, the project responds to site constraints and concerns about noise pollution by creating a composition of stacked volumes with setbacks. This allows for the creation of comfortable public spaces in between the buildings as pocket parks and plazas.

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Heatherwick Studio and Barcode Architects have been selected to design a new hub for culture, work and leisure in the Jaarbeursplein central square in Utrecht, Netherlands. The project aims to respond to the city’s diverse population and to bring a sense of warmth and fun to the square, according to the architects. Nicknamed Oopen, the building’s design integrates a colorful collection of cylinders that stand out against the backdrop of the neighborhood. The team has partnered with Edge, a sustainable real estate development company, to help bring the vision to life. Construction is set to start in 2025 and the building will be delivered in 2028.

MVRDV has revealed the master plan to expand the Noviotech Campus, a giant in Health & High Tech Innovation, in Nijmegen, east of the Netherlands. The concept combines the campus's already scattered buildings, adds new structures where there are gaps, and integrates the site within the city, putting ecology first. The municipality of Nijmegen, Kadans Science Partner, and NXP Semiconductors will collaborate with Noviotech Campus and MVRDV in the following months to develop and refine the master plan.

Subscriptions are quickly becoming an integral part of everyday life. For example, streaming platforms have completely replaced the need to own video cassettes, while ride-sharing services partially cover the need to own a private car. Subscriptions have been largely understood as digital services, but a new trend suggests that the same concept could be transferred to physical objects in the near future. Instead of owning a fridge, a washing machine, or even light bulbs, one could acquire a subscription to ensure the freshness of produce, clean clothes, and a well-lit home.

The concept is known as the “subscription-based economy,” a variant of the “circular economy” notion. It postulates that instead of owning some of the objects used every day, one could subscribe to a service to gain access to the same benefits, but without the need to own, maintain or dispose of the object in question. Consumers no longer buy products; they buy access to services. Sometimes, it would mean simply leasing the object instead of purchasing it, but the model goes one step further. It inscribes a shift of responsibility and mentality. Because consumers no longer own the objects, the responsibility to reuse and recycle falls to the producers, who are now in charge of the entire life cycle of the objects they create.

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Highlighting an untapped spatial resource, MVRDV's Rooftop Catalogue, in collaboration with Rotterdam Rooftop Days, is now available online for free. Commissioned by the City of Rotterdam, the Rooftop Catalogue presents 130 innovative ideas to make use of Rotterdam's empty flat roofs, showcasing a potential new phase in the city's development and illustrating how reprogramming rooftops can help with issues such as land scarcity and climate change while also addressing the practical side of repurposing these spaces in terms of construction options and suitable sites.

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MAD Architects, Led by Ma Yansong, has just revealed its design for the Danshuis, dutch for The Dance House. The project will transform the riverfront Provimi warehouse into a cultural destination in Rotterdam. The Danshuis initiative seeks to convert the old warehouse into a vibrant multi-use studio based on movement and performing arts, a vibrant place to exchange world dance culture. The Droom en Daad Foundation, the primary client of the project, hopes to place Rotterdam on the map as a world leader in arts and culture.

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Nieuwe Instituut has appointed Jan Jongert / Superuse Studios from Rotterdam as curator of the Dutch Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In response to Lesley Lokko’s overarching theme for this edition of the Biennale, “Laboratory of the Future,” the Dutch curatorial team aims to explore the complex systems that underpin the structures of our societies. The exhibition will be open from 20 May to 26 November 2023.

In recent years, the term “co-creation,” a buzzword in the business and management sector, has made its way into the architecture and urban planning discourse. The term is used to define a large concept that describes working intentionally with others to create something jointly. But architecture is already the result of a collaboration between multiple actors, architects, clients, investors, developers, and local administration, to name a few. Can the term still apply to this field, can it bring forth new forms of knowledge, and does it differ from the concept of participatory design?

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Videos

“Understanding precedes action.” That is the motto of the Urban Observatory, an interactive installation and web app created by TED founder Richard Saul Wurman that compiled a wide range of urban data for over 150 cities, allowing users to compare various characteristics of those cities – from population density to traffic speed limits – side-by-side. Urban Observatory was first created in 2013, a banner year for news about urban big data; later that same year, Waag made headlines with its interactive map visualising the age of every building in the Netherlands. The emergence of such platforms allowed people to see the world around them in new ways.

With the rise of Google Earth and other GIS tools, and platforms like envelope.city, or environmental simulations based on digital twin models of cities, urban big data has quietly come to underpin a wide range of tools used by professionals who shape our cities, with both the amount of data collected and the influence it has over decision-making expanding dramatically. However, these advances typically happen behind closed doors and in undemocratic spaces. How long must we wait for software that has all the user-friendliness, accessibility, and appeal of those older platforms, but which provides the average person with the tools to shape their city? In other words, if “understanding precedes action”, then why after almost a decade are we not seeing big-data-driven apps that encourage the public to actually do something?

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Videos

Under the motto "Get Set," the 2022 DDW exhibited more than 50 art and architectural installations to call out designers and communities for a shift from preparation to action facing the challenges of our time. Led by Miriam van der Lubbe, Creative Head of DDW, with Marjan van Aube and Formafantasma as ambassadors, the 21st edition of the Dutch Design Week took place the last week of October in Eindhoven, the Netherlands closing with a Graduation Show of over 200 students of the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Inspiring designers to incorporate innovation and sustainability and familiarize the public with all the technology has to offer, ArchDaily has selected 9 relevant works focused on bio-materials and modular systems. Highlighting ongoing design research, the list underlines projects that reinvent how we deal with nature and the space we live in. 

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The Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, opens The Energy Show and the Solar Biennale on Friday, September 9, 2022. In collaboration with The Solar Biennale designer and curator Matylda Krzykowski and solar designers Marjan van Aubel and Pauline van Dongen, the exhibition presents a series of projects that explores the sun's meaning and possibilities in society, the environment, and design. With Europe in the midst of an energy crisis, The Energy Show and the Solar Biennale is an opportunity for designers and the general public to examine the transition to solar energy and technology as we move towards a post-carbon future.

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The new apartment complex designed by Venhoeven CS and DS Landschapsarchitecten is characterized by the intention to stimulate biodiversity. Located on a four-acre plot in the Sluisbuurt on the Zeeburgereiland in Amsterdam, the complex will include 82 homes, a parking garage, and spaces for shops and businesses. The nature-inclusive project pays special attention to the design of green roofs, terraces, and facades to create micro-environments for local flora and fauna and to optimize energy consumption.

HA-HA, in partnership with BIK Bouw and Wooncompas Housing, will develop four social housing blocks for the community of Ridderkerk, near Rotterdam, Netherlands. The project uses materials from the existing social housing estate, built in the 1950s, and employs an innovative modular-timber system to create sustainable human-centered housing. The old buildings are planned to be disassembled and their components reused and integrated into the new development, which will increase the number of affordable units by 13%.

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Powerhouse Company, in collaboration with landscape architecture office DELVA, has unveiled the design for a new visitor center for the Koekamp, which will play an essential role as a gateway to the new Hollandse Duinen national park. This intervention will open part of Koekamp, a green expanse near The Hague’s Central Station, to the public. The visitor center, commissioned by the Dutch forestry commission, is expected to be completed in 2024.

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Designed for an insurance company, The Centraal Beheer building by Herman Hertzberger in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is widely recognized as one of the high points of the structuralist movement. MVRDV, in consultation with Herman Hertzberger’s office AHH, is transforming the celebrated building, making it the centerpiece of a new sustainable residential neighborhood while preserving its structure and core principles. The project is part of a larger area of development, a three-hectare site near the city’s train station. MVRDV’s design proposal introduces approximately 650-800 homes while keeping the focus on preservation, greening, and innovation.

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Powerhouse Company has revealed a new design for THIS., a new mixed-use development in Amsterdam’s North District. Overlooking the waterfront of the IJ river, the complex offers the necessary amenities for both working and living in an area close to the city center. The ensemble includes a new office building, two waterfront private sector residential buildings, and two social housing blocks containing a total of 2017 homes. A Hidden Garden, designed by Delva Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, connects the residential and office buildings, creating a space for leisure and social activities.

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