We are always curious what kind of building a foreign project will produce, we’re not obsessed with a certain aesthetic or signature so each one can yield a very different outcome. It sounds optimistic but we take it as it comes, it’s open minded I think.

It’s now been nearly 20 years since you founded MVRDV and around ten years since you garnered international acclaim with your experimental theory based exhibition Meta-City Data-Town and the landmark Hanover expo-Pavilion.  Another decade on, do you feel your practice and approach has changed much as you’ve won and realised more and more projects?

Yes this year will actually be our seventeenth together.  We had a kick start with a series of Dutch projects which culminated in the Expo-Pavilion, which was indeed a Dutch commission although it was in Germany. We had a Dutch contractor, a Dutch client, everything was Dutch except the site.  After that our work attracted a great deal of publicity and also the whole architectural practice started to become more international.  At that time we had enjoyed a certain momentum in architecture in the Netherlands, due to a favourable political situation.  For the first time in over half a century the Christian Democrats were not in government and this change was reflected in a more optimistic political and economic climate resulting in a series of extraordinary projects.  Unfortunately this is now rather different.  While a lot of things are still going on at the same time, there is not such a strong momentum anymore, it’s much more conservative and many of our generation of architects are now leaving and spreading their wings outside Holland, big offices like UNStudio and Mecanoo.

When we started we had a large commission but quite a small office so we had to team up with technical architects.  This way of working is more or less the same as when you work abroad and need a local architect, where you divide the work between the two firms, roughly on a 50:50 basis.  So we didn’t need to adapt much to work internationally.  In a traditional architectural office you had this kind of drawing room full of people doing the technical drawing.  That’s not really how it works for us because we have specific locations where we work that are always different and each one has its own requirements.  We are more design orientated – more concept orientated – and we happen to work in different places around the world. We also do master planning, it’s very varied, it goes from the large scale to small scale.

I read that your office feels it is unusually productive, that you have developed a way of working more efficiently with less stress, particularly towards deadlines.  Would you agree with this and would you mind sharing some of the management strategies and technologies you employ to achieve this?

Of course architecture offices have their own momentum and that’s never really comparable with a normal office job.  We try to keep it kind of normal, of course people work late but we hear from many people working for other offices that it gets too much, we tend to be relaxed relatively speaking.  It’s not so much to do with technology, it’s something more personal.

All architects are using space but you can do it in a very traditional way or you can do it literally in a space in a way when things go far out. In essence they are not that different, they are both interesting at the same time.

In Metacity/Datatown you described your offices home, the Netherlands, as a Dreamland for economics, culture, and production.  In many ways you base your practice on the involvement of these forces by adopting the most common results of economics and consumption – density and arbitrariness, even banality – as your own tools.  Although these factors are often associated with alienation even brutality, you have proven that they can be used to create surprising yet dignified public spaces and intimate dwellings.  Do you feel that by choosing to tweak the ordinary or banal, you create buildings more grounded in contemporary culture, showing how it could be creatively enhanced as opposed to being replaced or temporarily excluded?

You could explain this in many ways; I think good architecture should have many levels of communication.  It should be understandable in everyday life, to people who don’t know anything about architecture; they should be able to get the point whereas someone else could explain it in a different context.  We have this practical and conceptual approach, we try to combine these two, it’s never just concept or it would be La-Po-La – too academic.  It comes from a hands-on approach and also a curiosity and open mindedness so we also take on certain questions and ask ourselves why is it working like that?  This can lead to studies like Metacity/Datatown, an absurd study but with an interesting edge to it which deals with the use of space.  All architects are using space but you can do it in a very traditional way or you can do it literally in a space in a way when things go far out.  In essence they are not that different, they are both interesting at the same time.  As architects we are all space oriented but unlike some we work scalelessly.  Perhaps this stems from our education in the office where we had this study story from Jacob Bakema, who did a series of studies from stools, chair to city.  This scalelessness, it came back in the study, you had to do master planning, to cover all scales, we kept doing that somehow.

We try and make the small stuff and the big stuff all relate, they are really independent projects but they all relate to certain views of the world.  It sounds bigger than it is but that’s basically how it works.

Unfortunately this is now rather different, a lot of things are still going on at the same time but there is not such a strong momentum anymore, it’s much more conservative and our generation of architects are now leaving and spreading their wings outside Holland.

Perhaps the most important difference between MVRDV’s density and the density of pure economy is the differentiation and variety you inject by “mixing functions and integrating differences”.  This might find its expression in the collaging of a building’s façade system, perhaps covering a residential complex itself housing a variety of different apartment types, or the daring hybridization of a market hall and an apartment block  Why do you think it is that these denser situations result in a higher quality of life and better built environments?

Variety can really make cities more attractive and therefore more sustainable because they last longer and work better.  If you look at the most attractive neighbourhoods they are almost always where you have a mixture of working and living, flexibility and use; places like Soho, New York and in some districts of Amsterdam.  The buildings have the ability to change from residential to commercial and remain attractive while single purpose districts often fall out of fashion.  This is why we aim to mix functions, but it’s not always possible.  There are all sorts of regulations to do with sound, zoning and so on.  A lot of people get obnoxious and can make things really impossible, as bylaws and regulations accumulate and often remain long after they cease to be useful.  It could be part of an architect’s role to challenge these ridiculous constraints, to hold a up mirror to society and show alternatives for the future.  Holland has a reputation for accepting such reforms, we’re quite hands on but also as a country it’s really quite dense.  It means that every place is used for something – you can’t move something without making space.

MVRDV are a particularly Dutch phenomenon but you have many projects all over the world, particularly in Asia.  How have you found working in distant locations for people with different customs?  Is there anywhere in particular where you found a natural affinity for your ideas of density or adaptation and conservation of landscape?

You have to be careful when thinking and talking about a Dutch national identity but there might be a certain mental attitude linked to Holland.  This way of thinking can be exported, it doesn’t really matter where. We can work in Europe and build projects in Japan.  They might look different but they’re all part of the same body of work and deal with issues in a similar way.   We are always curious what kind of building a foreign project will produce, we’re not obsessed with a certain aesthetic or signature so each one can yield a very different outcome.  Every architect works with context but we’re not critical regionalists – we’re critical non-regionalists.  It would be boring to work with just one type of material or a certain shape.  It sounds optimistic but we take it as it comes, it’s open minded I think.

Every architect works with context but we’re not critical regionalists – we’re critical non-regionalists…It would be boring to work with just a one type of material or a certain shape.

At the moment, due to urbanisation and emerging global economies, there seems to be much greater building opportunities outside Europe.  However, as fuel prices rise and we are forced to adapt to the effects of climate change, it is credible to imagine major restructuring and rebuilding in Europe too.  Do you see Logroño Montecorvo Eco City as an early sign of a desire for such restructuring?

I think any building boom is over now, at least for a while and the population of Europe isn’t growing so much anymore.  Instead, people are questioning how can we make sustainable cities but not directly in one way, that they are functioning well and on the other hand that they are not too much polluting.  This example in Spain is interesting because there we’re trying to make an energy neutral, eco-neutral and CO2-neutral neighbourhood.  So that the energy the people who live there use, they also produce on site.  It’s quite complicated as it’s a rather small plot but it’s important to show that such self-sufficiency is possible.

Jacob van Rijs Spoke to Eva Guttmann and Craig Chamberlain on behalf of the HDA, Graz, 29th Janurary 2010.

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Evening, 11^th November 2009 Graz, Austria.

A crowd of eager students and professionals gathered tightly into a crowded lecture hall of the Graz Technical University. People were packed right to the back, filing up the stairs, across the floor and even out down the corridor. All were present in anticipation of Valerio Olgiati’s arrival. He was billed to talk about his philosophy, professional approach and his latest architectural projects.

The presentation was in German and so my understanding was rather limited, but the visual presentation was clear and I was able to confer with colleagues afterwards. Taking the stage, Olgiati quickly made his charms known with a series of well timed and evidently popular jokes, delivered as he was fitted with a series of microphones.

Olgiati is well regarded world wide. He is associated with an impressive list of eminent teaching institutions and sporting an ever-growing catalogue of elegant and imaginative built work. And so it was something of an event for him to be speaking in Graz – not to detract from its own healthy regional scene which has long been of international significance.   [For a detailed history of it's most famous expressionist 'schule' and more minimalist practices see Peter Blundell Jones’ excellent, ‘Dialogues in Time’ published by the Graz HDA (Haus der Architectur). who, in co-operation with the university, organised the evening’s lecture.]

Olgiati began with a rather unapologetic announcement that his buildings, or at least their representation, are non-contextual.  He supported this assertion with a series of slides taken at an exhibition of his work where large white models of competitions and realised projects, detached from site and locale, were assembled in the beautiful haupthalle of the Semper designed Zurich University/ETH building.  I was immediately sympathetic to this approach.  In his later explanations, particularly of the EPFL, Lausanne University building, it was apparent that context could be a key factor in his design strategy but he never let the issue tyrannise or develop into empty rhetoric.  Consequently, it would seem his buildings stand for themselves without making excessive demands on their immediate environment and without forcing a single or even multifaceted interpretation of the human life and history that surround them.  They simply do their thing quietly and proudly in a provocatively self-resolved fashion.

‘Nächste’ was one of the few words I could pick out consistently but I felt I was following as he lead us through his projects. Firstly was a museum for the Swiss National Parc in Zernez – two symmetrical towers of monolithic insulating-concrete with only a few spare fixtures in bronze. All six floors are physically identical although none are true repetitions as they occur at different elevations or are reflections of a twin. The near identical cubic towers are mirrored diagonally across a shared corner, another square where vertical circulation also occurs. The window cases are brought inside the matching 190cm high apertures and fixed to the internal face of concrete walls. Olgiati reasoned this on the disparity of the required tolerance of metal fabrication and the comparatively ambiguous tolerances one must expect from concrete. This disparity is most commonly absorbed by silicon or expanding foam but not here. As the concrete is itself the insulation there is no need to detail around cold bridges and the frame is simply mortared to the wall.

A similar system is used in ‘House for a Musician’ although here the concrete is coloured red and is divided by an insulated cavity. More is made of the treatment of the concrete too. The walls and their rosaries, which make the building so distinctive, are cast in hand carved wooden forms no-less.

There was also a little time for an explanation of his favourite projects and how they had informed his philosophy. We saw a palace from Schinkel – laberthine behind an ordered façade – the spiritual path of Hindu, Mughal and Shinto temples and their materials of hot red stone or transient wooden frame. Everything linked elegantly back to his built work, most notably to his new studio, a black wooden box hovering in a concrete tray over a black asphalt yard come basement. Just as in the Shinto shrine, this otherwise loose structure is stiffened by a central column. Similarly, the path through spirals clockwise whereas in the shrine it had circled.

After the talk concluded a short pre-filmed interview was screened. Olgiati sat and watched with the rest of us and did so encouragingly but he flinched perceptibly on occasions, particularly when making affirmations of his desire for totality within each project. That is totality of material, totality of construction and totality of the expression, although with Olgiati they often become inseparable. He insisted that such was the order of this totality that he wished a project would break to pieces, crumble, if a single element were removed or altered. There is something enchantingly medieval about this alchemy. Materials matter not only for their preciousness but because ideas, work and personality are teeming within them. They have a life of their own.

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