Archinect - News

MVRDV transforms 19th Century structure into new multifunctional NIO House Amsterdam HQ

2024-06-14T17:22:00-04:00

MVRDV’s remade space for the electric automaker NIO has opened in Amsterdam. The Chinese brand’s new European flagship offers just over 29,000 square feet of showrooms and other spaces carved out of a seven-story heritage structure in the Keizersgracht district that's held over from the 19th Century.

Partner Jacob van Rijs says: “The exciting challenge of this project was in unifying the history of this building with the identity of NIO, a company which in many senses is interested in offering a vision of the future. In a sense, we are confronting the same challenge that Rietveld resolved so gracefully 90 years ago. NIO House Amsterdam shows how the old and the new can provide a counterpoint for one another and ultimately enrich each other.”

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

The building has changed hands several times throughout its long history after originally being constructed for the New York Life Insurance Company in 1891. Special features include a second-floor “Joy Camp” childre...

Getty awards over $1.75 million to fix crappy concrete in "Important Modern Buildings"

2015-06-24T13:58:00-04:00

"Modern architecture is a defining artistic form of the 20th century at considerable risk, often due to the cutting-edge building materials that characterized the movement." -Deborah Marrow

In news that will surely make Prince Charles sigh with displeasure, the Getty Foundation announced it is awarding $1.75 million of grants to help preserve 14 structures in the modern style, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple, Walter Gropius’ residence ‘The Gropius House,’ and the Rietveld Schröder House. This is the second year the foundation has awarded the grants, and has chosen the buildings because (ironically) concrete as a building material has proven to be less than solid. “The use of concrete, while visually striking and radical for its time, has created a unique set of challenges for conserving some of the world’s most important modernist structures,” noted Antoine Wilmering, a senior program officer at the Getty Foundation. “Our new grants offer an excellent opportunity to advance research and conservation practices for this material. The accumulated knowledge that will result from the projects will be of tremendous benefit to the field.”

While the first year's gra...

Van Gogh Museum gets multicoloured make-over

2014-12-01T14:10:00-05:00

Until now the Amsterdam museum has usually presented its Van Goghs in a simple chronological sequence, set against white walls. This display originally seemed appropriate for the building’s architecture, a series of stark white galleries designed by Gerrit Rietveld, the leading Modernist architect of the De Stijl movement. The white-cube spaces have now been transformed by coloured walls, varying according to the artist's different periods [...].

Edwin Heathcote compares the Schröder House and Eames House

2013-04-08T19:33:00-04:00

Unlike Rietveld’s complex interplay of layered planes, the Eameses, looking towards more commercial approaches to middle-class housing, created something more like the box that Rietveld was trying to escape.