The lessons learned in creating innovative and iconic buildings are being used to create affordable housing and stronger communities, says Gideon Maasland, director and an architect at MVRDV, one of the Holland Metropole alliance’s design partners.  

MVRDV is the architect’s studio behind the iconic Valley in Amsterdam’s business district as well as dozens of other award-winning projects around the world. Valley itself, says Gideon, stems from a desire to break away from the generic concept of a tower block with hundreds of identical apartments.

“People want to live in a community, but in blocks of 600 identical apartments, you can’t even point out where you live,” says Gideon. “If we talk to people about how they want to live, you get a sketch with an angled roof, a tree, a fence, a car and a dog. But at the same time, we are densifying cities enormously and we are building blocks that are nothing like the sketch. With Valley we thought, ‘why not make far more green structures with terraces you can actually use?’.”

Valley was expensive, but lessons learned in a project like this can be translated into more affordable buildings. “For example, we learned a lot about how to build complex shapes, which would not have been possible before,” says Gideon. “So social housing also benefits… The market tends to make things affordable by making them smaller. That helps, but it is not always the right approach.”

Communal spaces

At the same time, he says, with apartments getting smaller, architects also need to think about the social and communal spaces where people can meet. “If your apartment is small and you want to celebrate your birthday, perhaps there should be somewhere else in the building you can rent for a party,” he says. “This is much better organised abroad. In Hong Kong, for example, apartments are small but communal areas are celebrated.”

In addition, it is crucial to mix different communities within a complex. “Interestingly, young people often have the same demands as old people,” he says. “Old people are often lonely for example, because their social circle becomes smaller with time. Youngsters too can suffer from a lack of social contact. So it is important to create a mix of people who can learn from each other and help each other.”

Concrete and carbon

Valley was completed two years ago and when it was designed in 2016 it was at the cutting edge of sustainability. “Now you can look at it and say ‘there is an awful lot of concrete’, and yes, it is a concrete structure,” Gideon says. “But perceptions have changed so much over the years. Carbon is a big topic at the moment.”

Gideon believes that a type of concrete will be developed which will solve the carbon issue altogether. At the same time, the demand for more sustainable buildings is pushing architects to look more toward redeveloping what is already there. “As architects we are used to starting with a blank page, an empty plot, and that is not the right approach anymore. The buildings, the things you can keep, add a certain quality to a new design.”

Illustration: MVRDV’s Nachteiland is an energy positive, timber hybrid tower