Challenging Convention: MVRDV’s Approach to Design

This presentation introduces MVRDV’s approach to architecture, driven by bold design and innovative solutions. Our research-based methodology challenges convention, focusing on sustainability, urban density, and the integration of built and natural environments. We create flexible, adaptable spaces that encourage inclusivity and community while advancing the use of sustainable materials and technologies.

Following a brief discussion of three dramatically different projects including Fourth Quadrant, Shenzhen Terraces, and Hills of Iasi, both the research underpinning the development and the delivery of 2022 Skyscraper of the Year-winning Valley will be explained. Taken together, the presentation will explore how MVRDV’s forward-thinking design helps shape environments that are both functional and transformative, and redefine the potential of urban living.

Introduction

Maria Perbellini

Dean of The School of Architecture and Design

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Moderation

Sandra Manninger

Associate Professor

Architecture
School of Architecture & Design

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Speaker

Cas Esbach

Cas Esbach, project leader and licensed architect in MVRDV’s Rotterdam office, has been a part of the firm since 2018, spearheading a diverse array of projects all across the globe. Most notably he has worked on the Shenzhen Terraces in Shenzhen, Tripolis Park in Amsterdam, and Valley in Amsterdam. Ranging from city block development and large-scale cultural campuses to university buildings, high-rise towers, and housing, the designs exemplify a concept-driven and vision-focused approach. Cas prioritises efficiency, pushing boundaries, forward-thinking methods, and research-driven conceptual thinking in his work, while actively integrating AI workflows into the design process to enhance creativity and efficiency.

Cas Esbach is a licensed architect. He holds a Bachelor and Master degree from TU Delft. Prior to joining MVRDV, he worked at Derksen|Windt, Civic Projects, and Bjarke Ingels Group, and he has taught at TU Delft.

Design Series: WORLDS UN/DESIGNED: Unscripted, Atypical, Unnatural, and Uncontrolled

Conventions have insistently shaped the practices of design and architecture. Design norms – planning conventions, material classifications, graphic standards, or accepted ideas of spatial experiences – attest to the ways designers approach world-building. Design norms often reveal a reliance on typified and naturalized views of spaces, systems, bodies, materials, and built environments that invariably foreclose more inclusive and progressive paradigms for our collective futures.

The SoAD AY 24-25 lecture and event series, Worlds Un/Designed seeks to deconstruct conventions in design, architecture, and urbanism by challenging typical stereotypes in design practices, urban systems, technological dependencies, gender and abilities, conceptions of natural and unnatural, and the blurring of physical and digital environments.

Worlds Un/Designed aims to address the exclusions and limitations inscribed in our existing constructed environments by engaging with questions of ecology, urbanity, sustainability, accessibility, mobility, and inclusion. The lecture and event series will include lecture presentations, book discussions and exhibitions as subtopics of the Un/Designed theme including among others: Unscripted addressing experiential perspectives of spatial design, unconventional usage and affordances; Atypical, addressing inclusive design for the atypical user; Unnatural interrogating the making of natural and unnatural biobased materials materials; and Uncontrolled, discussing on autonomous systems, unsupervised intelligence, and emergent
forms. By critically reflecting on the effects of conventions this lecture series calls for
stimulating our collective imagination towards healthier alternative future worlds, yet to be designed.

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