MVRDV co-founder Jacob van Rijs has handed over his role of Managing Director after a highly successful term in order to spend more time focusing on project design and education. He will still form the Board of Directors together with his fellow co-founders Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries. Inger Kammeraat will now take over the role of Managing Director to lead the company and to realise its ambitious global agenda and corporate responsibility goals.

Inger Kammeraat (1973, Netherlands) has been promoted to Managing Director of MVRDV, taking over the role from MVRDV co-founder Jacob van Rijs. Inger, a trained architect, was a member of the MVRDV management team from 2008 to 2012, responsible for project coordination and planning, when she helped to set up the firm’s office in Shanghai. After four years working in Uganda in various roles, Inger returned to MVRDV in September 2016, taking on the role of Manager Operations.

Jacob van Rijs (1964, Netherlands) co-founded MVRDV in 1993 alongside Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries. Alongside his work on numerous projects, he took on the role of Managing Director in April of 2016, during a wide-ranging reorganisation of the firm which established various departments within the firm and saw the appointment of four new partners. Under the management of Jacob, MVRDV has gone from strength to strength: It was recently named “Firm of the Year” by Architizer, and this year it was nominated for the FD Gazellen Award for being one of the fastest growing companies in the Netherlands—a prize that the firm also won last year. In 2016, the firm also moved to a new office in Rotterdam.

Along with this success has come growth, with the firm adding more than 100 staff members since the 2016 reorganisation, and managing the firm became increasingly time-consuming for Jacob. The promotion of Inger to the role of Managing Director is a logical next step in the development of a larger organisation and recognizes the excellent work she has done in her role as Manager Operations.

“It has been a pleasure to manage our office for the past two-and-a-half years, in which MVRDV has been experiencing a huge growth spurt: in just four years we have gone from 60 to 225 employees, with 200 people in Rotterdam and 25 in Shanghai and our newly opened office in Paris,” says Jacob. “In order to spend more time on our projects and teaching at TU Berlin, I am happy to transfer the responsibilities of daily management to Inger Kammeraat. She has shown herself to be a dedicated and enthusiastic manager in her current role.”

“It is a great honour for me to be appointed as Managing Director,” adds Inger. “I am extremely proud of being part of MVRDV and look forward to continue the professionalisation of our growing company. I will work on further realising our strategy and agenda to be a leader within our disciplines concerning the global challenges we face. MVRDV intends to maintain an important role in the discussion and to actively tackle issues such as climate change within the construction industry.”

2018 also marks MVRDV’s 25th year. The office is currently working on over 140 projects in 25 countries, ranging from large-scale urbanism to architectural projects at all scale