Reusing existing buildings is making MVRDV better at designing new ones, studio co-founder Nathalie de Vries tells Dezeen in this interview.

De Vries was 27 when she established MVRDV with Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs in Rotterdam in 1993, and since then, many of the studio’s priorities have remained the same.

What has changed, she said, are the ways it seeks to meet those priorities.

MVRDV has worked on numerous building conversions, including the Pyramid of Tirana. Photo by Ossip van Duivenbode

“We still want to deal with the issue of densification and the growing need for more buildings,” De Vries told Dezeen. “How to deal with that and the impact on our cities has shifted over time.”

“Part of the DNA of our office is that we never exclude possibilities,” she added.

“When your aim is to enhance a city, building technologies, or make better use of resources, and at the same time pursue making this cultural happening, then anything is possible.”

New builds and conversions “were seen as different professions”

MVRDV was a key player in what architectural historian Bart Lootsma memorably called the “Superdutch” movement – a wave of inventive architecture firms that emerged in the Netherlands during the 1990s.

One of the ways MVRDV has evolved since then is that it now works on numerous building conversions, which De Vries said was uncommon in the studio’s early years.

“Making a new building and transforming an old building were seen as different professions, especially in the Netherlands, where there were new buildings all the time,” she said. “Nowadays, it’s become a normal part of our practice.”

Frøsilo is a silo building that MVRDV converted into housing. Photo by Rob T Hart

Among the studio’s earliest forays into building conversions was Frøsilo, a Copenhagen silo building transformed into housing in 2005 by adding 84 apartments to its exterior.

De Vries recalls the “freedom in being able to transform” on that project.

“In the 2000s and 2010s, we started being asked to convert existing buildings, sometimes really ugly stuff, which led to a series of buildings we transformed that were not functioning, like malls and office buildings from the 1980s,” she added.

“There was a point where we were not yet being invited to monumental, historically sensitive buildings. We were just converting buildings in general.”

“We think differently about demolishing a building compared to 20 years ago”

More recently, the studio has adapted the Pyramid of Tirana, transformed a world war two military base into housing, and is set to convert a Dutch church into a swimming facility.

“People started to realise that we were capable of dealing with what is already there,” De Vries said.

“Of course, this is an important task to all of us nowadays because there is this scarcity – we think completely differently about demolishing a building compared to 20 years ago.”

“I recently gave a lecture in Bangkok at the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats where I showed a conversion we did for a high-rise in Shenzhen,” said De Vries, referencing a colourful skyscraper that MVRDV transformed into a women and children’s centre. “You sensed there that this is a new way of looking at how we build.”

Nathalie de Vries spoke about the Shenzhen Women and Children’s Centre in a lecture. Photo by Xia Zhi

Working with existing buildings inevitably has its restrictions, but De Vries argues that adaptive reuse allows for unique creative opportunities.

“When you transform, you can allow yourself things that, for reasons of economy, are not always possible in new buildings,” she said.

“When you make a new building, everything is always debated and discussed right away – is it exuberant, or is it needed? Whereas in existing buildings, you have to deal with what you have, and find amazing possibilities.”

Transforming buildings, particularly those from the 1980s, has made De Vries think about how to design new buildings for longevity.

“We saw that some buildings had deteriorated really fast,” she explained. “That became something very interesting – the transformation, but also learning and realising that buildings that were very recently made could still get outdated.”

“We’d learn something about how we should make new buildings and their abilities to change again in the future,” she added.

“When you lecture, you have to look at your own work and sharpen your thoughts”

Alongside her work with MVRDV, De Vries is an architecture professor at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands – a role that she says challenges her to continually think about her perspective on architecture.

“When I was becoming a professor at Delft, I had to write down in very short sentences what my intentions were with education – what’s your plan, what’s your topic, what’s your goal?” she said.

“When you lecture, teach or give an interview, you have to look at your own work and sharpen your thoughts.”

MVRDV converted a world war two military base into housing. Photo by Daria Scagliola

One of her focuses is to find ways of thinking laterally about architecture to maximise efficiency and design possibilities.

“I purposefully look at things in a kaleidoscopic way with the aim to upgrade productivity,” De Vries explained.

“If there is scarcity of space, means, possibilities or time, what can you do to stay ahead of that and not limit what you can do?”

“From the beginning, we were interested in how to use data to influence our designs”

MVRDV is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) in its practice to help improve the design process, and De Vries draws a comparison with the studio’s early adoption of computer-aided design.

“Some architects had fundamental discussions about the use of a computer to draw,” she recalled. “We were trying to stay on top of it without being carried away by it.”

“From the beginning, we were very much interested in how to use information, data and digitalisation to optimise and influence our designs.”

The studio has a dedicated team that researches ways to apply AI to architectural practice and teaches others within the company the best practices for utilising the technology, including for technical calculations, early design stage image generation and creating in-house libraries that can be used to generate floor plans.

“We’re starting to take the next steps with AI,” said De Vries. “We have teams dedicated to researching digital tools, connecting them to sustainability and thinking about carbon in our designs at an early stage.”

“We approach AI primarily as a tool and an enhancement of our way of designing,” she continued. “In that sense, the attitude is the same as in the 90s.”

The top photo of De Vries is by Barbra Verbij.

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