MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas has been selected as curator for the Van Gogh Homeland Biennale. Set to launch in 2025, the event will draw attention to the Brabant landscapes in the Netherlands which featured in many Vincent Van Gogh paintings more than a hundred years ago and are now under threat from climate change.

The Biennale is part of a broader collaboration between Midpoint Brabant, MVRDV, and the Van Gogh Homeland Foundation, which aims to raise public awareness of the challenges faced by the Dutch landscape, where the number of flood events is increasing, and tensions are rising between farmers, cities, industries, and nature lovers over land use. 

The team hopes that a blend of architecture, landscape design, sustainability, and leisure backgrounds will “show in an attractive and accessible way how the landscape that inspired Vincent van Gogh 150 years ago can be made more sustainable and greener in the future.”

The Biennale will include an outdoor exhibition with interventions and temporary installations that explore typical Brabant landscape elements. According to MVRDV, visitors will experience temporary sand dunes, horticultural towers, rain chambers, and heather houses throughout the landscape. After the 2025 event, the biennale will be organized in a different area of Brabant every two years.

“If you think about the climate challenge, you have to dare to think big,” Maas said following news of his appointment. “Exploring so many possibilities can get the ball rolling. Our outdoor exhibition will soon consist of numerous pavilions that will be placed in the landscape, like a string of beads.”

“We do not give visitors a moralistic message but let them feel climate change — the dryness, the wetness,” Maas continued. “We also show possible solutions such as a garden tower or a super dune. In my opinion, the task for the coming period lies in the interweaving of city with nature, and of nature with city. We must be open to a critical approach to each other's ideals.”

News of the biennale comes weeks after MVRDV won a competition to deliver an AI-focused business park in Heilbronn, Germany. The Dutch firm also recently completed a green-roofed wholesale market in Taiwan.

Additionally, 2023 has seen MVRDV co-founder Nathalie de Vries included on the Forbes 50 Over 50 EMEA list, while in January, the firm produced a catalog for cities facing sea level rise as part of a Vancouver competition.