MVRDV has completed the restoration of Aldo Van Eyck’s Tripolis Park office complex in Amsterdam. 

The project, which founder Winy Maas says was deeply personal to him as a fan of the eccentric late Structuralist master, re-establishes two buildings within the monumental original design to cater to Uber and other high-end tenants while greening the site and constructing a new 12-story 'landscraper' to protect against vehicular noise pollution.

The complex links to one of Van Eyck’s most beloved designs, the Amsterdam Orphanage from 1960. MVRDV felt it was their responsibility to protect both its future and the architectural character of the Tripolis buildings’ facades—an act which required careful research done in unison with surviving Van Eyck family members and his available archives. 

The work they performed thereafter included adding an all-wood cladding material outside, while designing a more usable office environment in the interior now free of dividing walls and beset with other interventions to make this key part of the program more sustainable. Solar panels were introduced, helping the project earn a BREEAM Outstanding certification.

“Demolition of heritage is always the easy option, especially if it is located in a business district dominated by high-rise buildings,” Maas stated, speaking of the desire to overcome norms and preserve one of his former TU Delft instructor’s final designs. 

"Tripolis Park offers an approach to protecting heritage that at the same time meets people’s expectations for an office today," he added. "It combines this with new densification, a continuation of the development at Amsterdam Zuidas, that doesn’t copy Van Eyck’s intention, but creates a new one, like a new layer in time. And it celebrates the in-between which, as Aldo explained to me when I was a student, is one of the main sources of beauty in architecture."

Work will continue on the third and final original Tripolis building in the coming years. Winy Maas will be in Los Angeles to speak at SCI-Arc next week, November 13th, as part of the school’s Fall lecture series. Also in Amsterdam, the firm recently completed its transformation of a 19th Century structure into the new European headquarters for the Chinese automaker NIO.