What's next - MVRDV in 2023

Season’s highlights.

The next half year many projects will be completed. Here's an overview.

Shenzhen Women and Children Centre - Shenzhen, China Mainland© Xia ZhiFall 2023 opens with a colourful completion of the Shenzhen Women & Children’s Centre. The project is a renovation of a mixed-use building aimed at the welfare of women and children. With its colourful façade and green rooftops, the building becomes a refreshing presence in Shenzhen’s Futian district; more importantly, it provides a wide range of facilities including a library, a theatre and “discovery hall” for children, a women’s exhibition hall, a family service hall, and supporting facilities as well as offices and a hotel. This is an important precedent for repurposing buildings in a city that is soon to see a “great wave of adaptive reuse”.

Gymnasium Bekkevliet - Sint-Michielsgestel, The Netherlands

© Daria Scagliola and Stjin BrakkeeGymnasium Bekkevliet opens its doors on September 28th, as the completion is finished. The main element of this design led by two alumni of the Gymnasium Beekvliet – MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas and Theobert van Boven of Van Boven Architecten – is a colourful, flowing addition that reaches out into the school’s plaza and considerably improves circulation, creating a new focal point at the heart of the building. Exhibiting artwork by visual artist Ian Kirkpatrick, the addition becomes a new focal point for the school’s activities.

The Canyon - Chicago, United States of America© Jason O'Rear

The Canyon, a 23-storey mixed-use building designed by MVRDV, is officially completed and has recently opened to its first residents. The project is built as part of a masterplan that transforms a windswept parking lot on San Francisco’s waterfront into a new sustainable neighbourhood, known as Mission Rock, with housing for middle income residents. With its jagged walls and a publicly accessible “canyon” providing a route through the site, The Canyon is reminiscent of the dramatic geology of California, inspired in part by San Francisco’s charismatic topography. The design references Californian rock formations, and features a landscaped public “canyon” that cuts diagonally through the building’s plinth, connecting to the offices and to shared amenities for residents.

Tripolis Park - Amsterdam, The Netherlands
© Bart van Hoek

Tripolis Park is completed and the official opening scheduled for October. The project is a renovation and enlarging of one of the last projects completed by celebrated Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, the Tripolis office complex in Amsterdam. The project comprises the renovation of the old buildings, a new park, and a new office block that creates a sheltering screen to protect the complex from of the adjacent highway while embracing the Van Eyck-designed buildings behind. A key goal of the transformation project was to ensure that Van Eyck’s buildings would become commercially viable. That this has been achieved is demonstrated by the fact that Uber has signed as the building’s main tenant.

Pyramid of Tirana - Tirana, Albania© MVRDV

Fall 2023 has gifted us with another exciting completion - the Pyramid of Tirana. The brutalist monument in the heart of Albania’s capital city, once the showpiece of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha, is dramatically renovated by MVRDV. The concrete structure is reused, the atrium and its surroundings greened and opened, and a small village of cafes, studios, workshops, and classrooms – where Albanian youth can learn various technology subjects for free – permeates the site, both inside and outside the pyramid itself. The Pyramid is thus expected to become a new hub for Tirana's cultural life and a carrier for the new generation.

Vallée Verte - Bordeaux, France

© Ossip van DuivenbodeThe beautiful project of La Vallée Verte in Bordeaux is nearly finished! A residential building within the Bastide-Niel district combines the angled forms of MVRDV’s own Bastide-Niel masterplan with a verdant “crater” - a circular internal courtyard with an abundance of plants adorning generous terraces. Its own courtyard offers a lively new piece of the city and a variety of homes for residents from all backgrounds. The project replicates a natural valley landscape, with different plants at different levels, to enable a diversity of species. The entire Bastide-Niel district aims to obtain the label of an Eco-neighbourhood. To contribute to this objective, the thermal needs of La Vallée Verte are fully provided by renewable energies.

Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence - Heilbronn, Germany© MVRDV

The Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) in Heilbronn is in motion from the concept phase to the schematic-design phase. With its mixture of business campus, laboratories, a start-up innovation centre, housing, communication centre, and other amenities, the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) is not only an attractive place to work. Indeed, it is also a destination for curious visitors to see the development of world-changing technologies first hand, to interact with the people behind their creation, and to learn about the intentions behind their work. The recognisable circular plan aims to position the campus as a world-leading site for the development of AI technologies. MVRDV's design, developed for a consortium led by the municipality of Heilbronn and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, makes the IPAI Campus instantly recognisable, serving as a branding tool that raises its profile worldwide – even being visible in satellite photos.

Tencent Campus - Shenzhen, China Mainland

© AchtainThe construction of Tencent Campus is well underway, with the structure completed. Located on a 133-hectare site in a prominent location in Qianhai Bay, Shenzhen, Tencent’s brief called for an entire urban district including offices, homes for Tencent employees, commercial units, public amenities, schools, and a conference centre. MVRDV’s proposal shows how the campus is made and concludes into a smart city district shaped like a continuous undulating mountain range, with a waterfront park winding its way around the base. “With ubiquitous smart city elements, headlined by a futuristic data hub at the heart of the campus, Tencent employees would feel enveloped by technology as well as being literally surrounded by nature” - says MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

La Serre - Issy-les- Moulineaux, France 

© MVRDV

The mixed-use project of La Serre has started construction. This “vertical village" consisting of housing and shops inserted into an open greenhouse, incorporates more than 3,000 square metres of terraces and gardens. In La Serre, each apartment will have an outdoor space and more than 25% of the living area of the building is devoted to terraces and balconies, resulting in an average of 8 m² of outdoor space per inhabitant.

B8 Center Hochpunkt - Düsseldorf, Germany

© MVRDV

B8 Center Hochpunkt has progressed to the concept design phase. The 66 metre high office building, part of the B8 centre masterplan of "Grüne Mitte", also offers diverse public facilities like a bowling alley, fitness centre, cafeteria, conference spaces and a "Möglichkeitsraum" - a space of possibility. An extended green landscape serves as terraces for the tower, the adjacent housing, as well as the green courtyard. Development of the project is split into two cubes, in order to close the urban block and, at the same time, relate to the city context.