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Winy Maas on Almere’s radical vision of the future

2022-04-06T13:38:00-04:00

"We didn't really plan anything in concrete detail, but instead allowed residents to build their own neighbourhoods," says Maas. "In return they have more responsibility – to plan streets with their neighbours, to arrange their own energy provision, and so on. That part sounds radical to some people – but it's really just how cities were built for centuries." "We don't believe that any city should be the result of the vision of just one person or one organisation.”

The designer of this year’s Floriade horticultural expo talked to the BBC about the city’s self-organized development and how it all ties into his MVRDV-designed Almere 2030 master plan that will add some 60,000 residencies by the end of the decade. Maas wouldn’t categorize Almere as an experimental city “exactly,” but said rather that he sees it as “a city in which experiments can happen […] The difference is subtle but important.”

“Successful cities always arise from the input of multiple people over years, decades, sometimes millennia,” he explained. “It's this belief that has led to Almere's reputation for experimentation – how we allow individuals to add their own vision.”

MVRDV's new Flores Tower is a top-to-bottom exhibition of flower power

2022-03-14T13:25:00-04:00

The colorful new centerpiece of the 2022 Floriade horticultural exhibition is now set to debut after MVRDV announced the completion of its 43.5-meter (142-foot) Flores Tower in the Dutch city of Almere.

The vibrant structure comes complete with a custom-made, AR-enabled panoramic facade artwork titled Sympoiesis from Rotterdam-based Arttenders and the Flemish artist Alex Verhaest.

Image © MVRDV x Arttenders x Alex Verhaest, © 3D Capacity

Taking the surrounding MVRDV-designed arboretum as its inspiration, the glass-paneled facade is activated by a digital scripting technique that projects a layered composition with images of 1,800 different floral species taken from various databases and university libraries.

The illustration covers the full catalog of plants and flowers available to visitors of the expo with an interpretive key located in the building’s plinth that offers itself as a proportionate wayfinding guide indicating th...

MVRDV’s Almere Plan Wins Floriade 2022 Competition

2012-09-25T14:32:00-04:00

The Dutch city of Almere has won the bid for the Floriade 2022 and will host the prestigious world horticultural expo in the year 2022. The exposition takes place once every ten years in the Netherlands and is currently ending in Venlo. The MVRDV-designed plan for Almere seeks to be not a temporary expo site but a lasting green Cité Idéale as an extension to the existing city center.

The Almere/MVRDV concept beat out fierce competition from Boskoop with OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Groningen with West 8, and Amsterdam Bijlmer with MTD Landscape Architect.