MVRDV's Winy Maas on Dipping Our Planet in Green in Design and the City Podcast
2020.12.11
Design and the City a podcast by reSITE, on how to make cities more livable and lovable, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future, kicks off its second season, with Winy Maas. In this first episode, the co-founder of MVRDV and The Why Factory discusses ideas that are seemingly larger than life, pushing the boundaries of our urban potential.
ReSITE, a global non-profit acting to improve the urban environment, launched the second installment of its podcast Design and the City. Released for the first time last year, Design and the City, is back, bigger than ever, sharing different ideas on how to create more livable and lovable cities. Featuring guests involved in all aspects of city-making, urban development, architecture, and design, the digital audio series will explore the challenges and problems our current urban environments are facing. Seeking to imagine what a city that is built for everyone looks like, the podcast will tackle issues such as surveillance and security, real estate development and leisure in cities post-COVID, food security and sustainability, and inclusivity and inequality among others.
Interviewed by Martin Barry, founder of reSite, the guest of the first episode of Design and the City is “constantly looking towards the future and asking the question - what’s next?”. Winy Maas, the founder of MVRDV, spoke about his recent architectural ventures and discussed the projects “The Why Factory” is involved in. Starting off with his personal experience during COVID lockdowns, the conversation shifts towards the stairs installations generated by MVRDV, in a couple of European cities and their impact.
Along with the Why Factory, the architectural firm played a central role in this year's European Nomadic Biennial, Manifesta 13, in Marseille, France, leading an interdisciplinary urban study focused on the southern French city, named “Le Grand Puzzle.” Moreover, Maas’s think-tank, through its Green Dip initiative, reimagines metropolises, like New York and Hong Kong, and rethinks the typical set “green space”, merging it with the existing urban fabric and transforming concrete jungles into green ones. Experimenting with his interventions, the first test project for this vision was the Depot in Rotterdam, where MVRDV planted a forest; the Valley, in Amsterdam, a three-dimensional mixed-use tower landscape in the Zuidas, and the Market Hall in Tainan, a city in the southern part of Taiwan, where the team created a pool to test climatic cooling.
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***Source: https://www.archdaily.com/953040/mvrdvs-winy-maas-on-dipping-our-planet-in-green-in-design-and-the-city-podcast
***Author: Christele Harrouk
