Thank you for an exciting 2012, a year full of energy we enjoyed greatly: MVRDV turned 20, we won amazing new projects such as the Floriade, we completed three major buildings plus an urban plan and we work currently on seven construction sites. Our work toured the world in exhibitions such as the Architecture Biennale in Venice and the dOCUMENTA. We mastered LEED and BREEAM to tackle the green future. We opened our Shanghai branch office for our growing Asian activities. The Why Factory produced a series of studies, exhibitions and books. We received awards and two nominations for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2013. To us 2012 remains an exciting year with the possible realization of the 400 meter tall Vertical Jakarta project Peruri88.
2012 is the year of doomsday prophecies and somehow this has enormously affected the worlds building business . What can an architecture office contribute? Perhaps display optimism and continue to invent, worldwide, beyond the nervousness of local economies.
For MVRDV 2012 was a year of cutting ribbons: The Book Mountain library in Spijkenisse was opened by Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands and has since been embraced by the population; one can even get married in the library. Right next door the 42 apartments of the Library Quarter were completed and its tilted quirky house became a tourist attraction. Our biggest party of last year was winning the Floriade with the City of Almere, big fireworks and rap star Ali B celebrating that a plant city will emerge in 2022 as a new inner city district. In Dijon we opened Teletech Campus, a transformed former Mustard laboratory became a call centre. In Oslo the DNB banks international headquarter opened its doors, a rock to be climbed on the Norwegian shore. Both projects devoted to excellent working conditions for the employees.
We are proud to announce that both Book Mountain and Teletech are nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2013. In Hamburg we were voted A&W Architect of the Year 2012 by the readers of A&W magazine. MVRDV finally left its teenage years in 2012 and celebrated its 20th birthday marked by a small retrospective which has so far toured through Germany and to Bangalore, India. In Bordeaux the CUB helped us realise an exhibition on site and an installation on the world famous Miroir dEau allowing the public to experience the new UNESCO approved neighbourhood Bastide Niel. In Seoul we built another Vertical Village show for the JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture at Total Art Museum and our Beagle House was met with great enthusiasm at Art Basel Miami.
We won a number of competitions such as the Floriade more to follow soon and we are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the Kiruna urban plan in Sweden, the master plan for presquile de Caen in Normandy and the 400 meter tall Peruri88 in Jakarta and a few others.
2012 is also the year of the hard hat: In Rotterdams city centre we have by now realised with Provast the first two floors of the arch of Market Hall. In Schijndel, the birth place of Winy Maas, 25 years after writing a letter to the mayor about improving the town centre, the Glass Farm is nearing completion and will be opened January 17th 2013. In Pune, India, the 6th floor of the Amanora Future Towers has been reached, a project of 3500 apartments with facilities. ICADE have started construction of the Pushed Slab, the energy efficient office building in Paris, that opens up its heart for the surrounding by an explosion of floors. In Tirana the Toptani Shopping Centre is under construction and in Gangnam, Korea, a stylish boutique shopping centre is nearinging completion. In Nanjing a leisure centre with 15 individual buildings among them an elevated hotel, a marriage building, a cinema and many boutiques is on its way.
Not yet on site but proceeding are the Yongsan Dream Hub in Seoul, the Baltyk Tower for Garvest in Poznan, Poland, the Ku.Be in Frederiksberg for Realdania and the participatory urban plan for Almere Oosterwold which made it to the Venice Architecture Biennale. Comic strips and rock music are the themes of the two museums we are currently working on, the speech bubble shaped CCAM in Hangzhou and the butch ROCKmagneten in Roskilde. In urbanism we continue among others on Bastide Niel in Bordeaux, the New Basel island in the Rhine, the new Adour river front development in Bayonne, the studies and developments on the former barracks in Mannheim, and a range of projects in Almere, which has appointed Winy Maas as urban supervisor.
Next to all this construction we continue our engagement in the academic realm. The relation with The Why Factory has been strongly extended. Winy Maas continued as professor in urbanism and architecture exploring the future city with The Why Factory at Delft University of Technology and expanded temporarily its branch into ETH in Zurich. It launched new book titles as The Vertical Village which was translated into Korean and Chinese and City Shock which will continue with NL Shock shortly. The Why Factory is currently working on upcoming books as The New Worldwonders and Absolute Leisure which will be released soon. Studies titled The 4 Minutes City, Biodivercity, Copy Paste, Transformer, Food City, Austeria, Porous City and others are currently finalised. For the Solar Waterlillies The Why Factory received a Zumtobel Award. The Why Factory opened its exhibitions on the Porous City at the Venice Architecture Biennale and at BODW in Hong Kong, the installation made of 2 million LEGO bricks will continue to travel around the world. At the dOCUMENTA in Kassel the installation iCity was presented. Jacob van Rijs engaged in Wismar as visiting professor discussing food production in the city and Nathalie de Vries engaged at Harvard GSD for a semester focussing on a regeneration project in Boston. The wider MVRDV team gave lectures and workshops in Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Poland, China, Sweden, Canada, the USA and many other places connecting to education on all levels.
How does it feel to live or work in an MVRDV building? This is the central issue of MVRDVs upcoming monograph The Buildings for which we revisited them all. Most sincere thanks to all the people who live or work in our buildings and have let us and our visitors enter their domain countless times with ever so great generosity.
Last but not least the great news that there are 4 new kids by MVRDV staff!
We all wish you a Happy and (yes!) a very fruitful 2013!