“Art is essential to understand our societies and cultures beyond the political vagaries of a certain moment. It can be critical through beauty (or through ugliness), it is one of the world’s places of autonomy, reflection, production of alternatives, seduction, and hope. In this sense, the PAN Amsterdam campaign we conceived is a call for action for both the public and the private sector. Let’s protect art.

“Our contribution to PAN is based upon the idea of bringing art to the urban scale, enlarging the role of art. Inspired by the work of Claes Oldenburg, whose public art installations featured large replicas of everyday objects, we claim for a city that is full of art. Let’s make cities of diversity that become true living art biennials.

“PAN’s art collection is the base for our visualisations. This art collection forms an enormous cloud of knowledge growing constantly as time goes by, just like the endlessly growing amounts of information gathered in data centres. How to accumulate all the art that is produced? Where to locate it in the future? Myriad options are possible: from a flat city of art spread across the plains, to a compact and dense one. From a tower of art on earth to a cloud of art in the sky, to a donut, to a puppy, to a spider… To a planet… How to evaluate the best direction in which to go? How to ‘urbanise’ with art? We can design a city where streets are organised in alphabetical order: from A as in Abramovich to Z as in Zurbarán. Otherwise, if the city is designed in a chronological manner, then legacy of Ancient Egypt might be displayed in plazas surrounded by Dutch Golden Age area quarters with Rembrandt courtyards.

“Sorting is a free exercise allowing us to organise information and hence this art city in many ways: from dark to light, from black to white, from porous to compact, from flat to vertical, from light to heavy. And the list goes on…

“Let’s think together how to sort all the art. Isn’t sorting an art in itself? ”

Welcome to the art of sorting. Welcome to the city of arts. Welcome to PAN.”

— Winy Maas With MVRDV and @The Why Factory

The students of The Why Factory at CTU Prague take over one of the atriums with slogans for a future Bio World.

Bioworld:

Earth is our home; Earth supports us and contains all known life in the universe. But our home is threatened: climate breakdown, population growth, deforestation, pollution, income disparities – just to name just a few – are accelerating tremendously. These urgencies demand action and -more than ever- imagination from all of us, from citizens to designers to policy makers.

It is obvious that it is time to begin thinking about our planet in completely new ways. Both the built and the non-built environment have become fundamentally different in many aspects, but we are still trying to physically define it in the same way as before. And we are almost paralyzed in what seems to be a splintered and contradictory reality. On the one hand cities and communities are highly individualistic and increasingly based on the individual unit, and on the other hand global connectivity and awareness is proliferating in almost all our daily activities. There is a need to find ways of bringing together these two extremities – the individual and the collective – from both ends and both conceptually and practically, into possible constructions.

Winy Maas, the recently appointed visiting professor at the Faculty of Architecture of CTU in Prague, will instruct, together with Javier Arpa Fernández, Adrien Ravon, Lex te Loo and Šimon Knettig, two semesters during the academic year 22/23 with the The Why Factory, the think-tank he directs at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

During the Winter semester (Next Planet design studio), The Why Factory will look at the current planetary urgencies and to possible interventions to construct alternative futures for our planet (please see description below). In the Spring semester (Czech Checks design studio), the focus will be put in the analysis of the Czech Republic and the proposal of a myriad interventions aimed at triggering a discussion around the country’s future (description of this studio will follow shortly).

Fall Studio:

Earth is our home; Earth supports us and contains all known life in the universe. But our home is threatened: climate breakdown, population growth, deforestation, pollution, income disparities – just to name just a few – are accelerating tremendously. These urgencies demand action and -more than ever- imagination from all of us, from citizens to designers to policy makers.

It is obvious that it is time to begin thinking about our planet in completely new ways. Both the built and the non-built environment have become fundamentally different in many aspects, but we are still trying to physically define it in the same way as before. And we are almost paralyzed in what seems to be a splintered and contradictory reality. On the one hand cities and communities are highly individualistic and increasingly based on the individual unit, and on the other hand global connectivity and awareness is proliferating in almost all our daily activities. There is a need to find ways of bringing together these two extremities – the individual and the collective – from both ends and both conceptually and practically, into possible constructions.

Winy Maas joins a panel marking the celebration of Herman Hertzbeger’s 90th birthday with a roundtable discussion celebrating Hertzberger’s legacy in conversation with Herman Hertzberger himself. It is accompanied by an exhibition featuring photographs of his workspace by renowned photographer Johnannes Schwartz.

 

 

Some moments of the MSc1 Bioworld studio kickoff at the TUDelft. We are very excited to explore Bioworld for the next ten weeks.

Earth is our home; Earth supports us and contains all known life in the universe. But our home is threatened: climate breakdown, population growth, deforestation, pollution, income disparities – just to name just a few – are accelerating tremendously. These urgencies demand action and -more than ever- imagination from all of us, from citizens to designers to policy makers.

It is obvious that it is time to begin thinking about our planet in completely new ways. Both the built and the non-built environment have become fundamentally different in many aspects, but we are still trying to physically define it in the same way as before. And we are almost paralyzed in what seems to be a splintered and contradictory reality. On the one hand cities and communities are highly individualistic and increasingly based on the individual unit, and on the other hand global connectivity and awareness is proliferating in almost all our daily activities. There is a need to find ways of bringing together these two extremities – the individual and the collective – from both ends and both conceptually and practically, into possible constructions.

During the Winter semester (Next Planet design studio), The Why Factory will look at the current planetary urgencies and to possible interventions to construct alternative futures for our planet (please see description below). In the Spring semester (Czech Checks design studio), the focus will be put in the analysis of the Czech Republic and the proposal of a myriad interventions aimed at triggering a discussion around the country’s future (description of this studio will follow shortly).

Fall Studio:

Earth is our home; Earth supports us and contains all known life in the universe. But our home is threatened: climate breakdown, population growth, deforestation, pollution, income disparities – just to name just a few – are accelerating tremendously. These urgencies demand action and -more than ever- imagination from all of us, from citizens to designers to policy makers.

It is obvious that it is time to begin thinking about our planet in completely new ways. Both the built and the non-built environment have become fundamentally different in many aspects, but we are still trying to physically define it in the same way as before. And we are almost paralyzed in what seems to be a splintered and contradictory reality. On the one hand cities and communities are highly individualistic and increasingly based on the individual unit, and on the other hand global connectivity and awareness is proliferating in almost all our daily activities. There is a need to find ways of bringing together these two extremities – the individual and the collective – from both ends and both conceptually and practically, into possible constructions.

Next Planet is an invitation to pursue collective aspirations instead of cultivating individual dreams by elaborating a new common, global, agenda and formulating hypothetical planetary scenarios for the future. During the design studio at CTU, students will explore a myriad of issues (from the smallest to the largest scale) -one by one-, trying to reveal how the planet will change in technical, social, or economical terms when looking at one variable at a time.

Can we make a planet that can cool down instead of warming up? Can we make a truly green world by reforesting the deserts and covering our cities in vegetation?
How does a scenario of overall equality, freedom or self-sufficiency materialize on our planet? How do automation, nanomaterials, robotics, or biotechnology contribute to the production of a healthier world? If the dense, diverse, and intense city is the one that best responds to the collective need of saving resources and limiting global warming, how can it fulfil our individual desires at the same time?

What urban forms might appear from those scenarios? What architecture, what landscape, what urban design could support such urbanity? What ecosystems, transport networks or infrastructure would emerge?…

This book brings together research undertaken by students from The Why Factory at TU Delft and students from IIT Chicago, RMIT Melbourne and Bezalel Academy Jerusalem who collaborated with The Why Factory.

Why are we condemned to live in mass cages, multiplied to towers and slabs? Why should we want to live in profit-driven spaces that reduce our options in life to limited variations of the same basic floor plans? Where is our freedom? How can we improve on this? Can architecture take on our egos and shape a future with more and more responsible options?

(w)Ego investigates the freedom to design and build our dream home in the dense city. It explores the potential of desire-based design processes, prioritising residents’ wishes in the process of constructing and adapting housing and the city itself. It expands the possibilities of individual fantasy in a dense world by means of negotiation with our neighbours and the environment. In short, freedom and imagination meet responsibility and collaboration.

Ego becomes (w)Ego. Moving from fear to curiosity, rigidity to adaptability, egoism to (w)Egoism, (w)Ego explores and pushes the limits of domestic architecture, looking for new ways to live together in density.

(w)Ego is the thirteenth book in The Why Factory’s Future Cities series, and follows The Why Factor(y), Visionary Cities, Green Dream, Vertical Village, Hong Kong Fantasies, City Shock, We Want World Wonders, Barba, Absolute Leisure, Copy Paste, PoroCity, and Towers of Choice.

A preview presentation of (w)Ego will be on show at Agir!, the upcoming exhibition of the work of MVRDV and The Why Factory at Galerie ArchiLib in Paris, which opens to the public on June 10. The official book launch will take place June 14, 19:30, on The Podium, on top of the roof of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. See here for details of this event.

A sneak preview of the book can be seen here.

Title: (w)Ego, Dream Homes in Density
Authors: Winy Maas, Javier Arpa Fernández, Adrien Ravon, Felix Madrazo
Publisher: nai010 Publishers
(w)Ego by The Why Factory (TU Delft)
ISBN: ISBN 978-94-6208-530-5
Paperback | English | 356 Pages | June 1st, 2022

“Architecture and urbanism are calls to action” – that is the central principle behind MVRDV’s newest exhibition, Agir!, that will open at the ArchiLib Gallery in Paris on June 10. Taking its name from the French verb meaning “to take action”, the exhibition examines MVRDV’s work through an explicitly activist framing. The ideological underpinning for this framing comes from a “bucket list” developed by MVRDV, comprising 44 goals for the future of our world, from “biodiverse”, “self-sufficient”, and “green” to “collaborative”, “democratic”, and “beautiful”.

The first exhibition focused primarily upon MVRDV’s broad portfolio of work in France, Agir! presents over fifty projects, positioning the firm’s French work within their broader oeuvre of international projects and research. Each project is accompanied by a punchy “slogan” – inspired by the language of activism and protest – that captures the essence of the project, highlighting how each design challenges the status quo and paves the way for a better future.

The exhibition also includes the work of The Why Factory, the think-tank established at TU Delft by MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas in 2007. Forming a symbiotic relationship with the designs of MVRDV, the research at the Why Factory investigates the future of the city and the planet to produce observations, hypotheses, and statements in a visual and direct manner. The exhibition gives special focus to a presentation of the think-tank’s newest publication, (w)Ego, which will be launched during the exhibition.

“When I founded MVRDV alongside Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, we were strongly motivated by a desire to do things differently, to make the changes in the world that we thought were necessary,” says Winy Maas. “I am proud to say that almost 30 years later, that spirit is still fundamental to our office – even while the challenges that we face as a species only grow more urgent. This was part of the reason for the foundation of The Why Factory: I wanted something that was independent, so we could research without thinking about the immediate needs of an architecture firm, but which nonetheless could help inform the future vision of the company. With this exhibition we want to challenge our colleagues, in a way: what kind of future do you want to see?”

The projects are printed in chronological order on a 78-metre-long fabric curtain that is tightly folded into the gallery’s small floorplan. This density of information highlights the intensity of action required to tackle the challenges afflicting society, the environment, and the world at large. To magnify this sense of urgency, the exhibited works are accompanied by graphics on the floor that show the condition of the polar ice caps at various moments in the project timeline.

Despite the seriousness of this framing, the tone of Agir! is, at its heart, optimistic. It shows how, through their work, architects can fight against global injustices and presents idealistic architecture not as a mere utopian speculation, but as a pragmatic possibility. This is underscored by the exhibition’s final component; connected to the ArchiLib gallery, via a patio at the rear of the space, the exhibition continues into the ground floor of MVRDV’s own Paris office, which during the exhibition will be open to the public for the first time. Here, the exhibition presents models of projects currently in progress, following the style of Parisian ateliers d’artistes. In this way, visitors not only experience MVRDV’s history of architectural action, but also see actions which are still being taken, in the place where they are being carried out.

Agir! will open to the public on June 10 at the ArchiLib Gallery in Paris (located at 49, Boulevard de la Villette). The exhibition will be on show until July 26; the gallery is open Monday-Friday from 09:30 to 18:00.

(w)Ego is the thirteenth book in The Why Factory’s Future Cities series, and follows The Why Factor(y), Visionary Cities, Green Dream, Vertical Village, Hong Kong Fantasies, City Shock, We Want World Wonders, Barba, Absolute Leisure, Copy Paste, PoroCity, and Towers of Choice. Come and join this lecture by Winy Maas in the occasion of the launch of the most recent book by The Why Factory (TU Delft): (w)Ego.

About (w)Ego

(w)Ego investigates the freedom of designing and building our dream home in the dense city. (w)Ego explores the potential of desire-based design processes, prioritizing residents’ wishes in the process of constructing and adapting housing and the city itself. It expands the possibilities of individual fantasy in a dense world by means of negotiation with our neighbours and the environment. In short, freedom and imagination meet responsibility and collaboration. Ego becomes (w)Ego. Moving from fear to curiosity, rigidity to adaptability, egoism to (w)Egoism, (w)Ego explores and pushes the limits of domestic architecture, looking for new ways to live together in density.

Practical info

This event takes place on The Podium, on top of the roof of Het Nieuwe Instituut. The Podium is designed by MVRDV and is Festival Heart of the Rotterdam Architecture Month ’22 during June. Upon arrival, go to the pink RA Month information desk. Visitors for RA Month events in the Festival Heart have automatic acces to The Podium and do not have to book a seperate timeslot.

The Why Factory, together with artist and haute-couture designer Iris van Herpen, launches Every(body) is urbanism, a research that explores the crossovers between biodiversity, clothing and the city.

Every(body) is urbanism operates at the intersection of nature, urbanism, architecture and the human body. This movie: The Veins of the City is part of a larger project, the Green Metropolis, an initiative launched by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands. The Green Metropolis is aimed at producing real solutions to tackle planetary urgencies by focusing on the capacity of nature to contribute to the fabrication of a more sustainable built environment. The Green Metropolis will include a traveling exhibition that will display dresses designed by Iris van Herpen, proposals for the city of the future by the Why Factory, which will all blend together to form a series of ‘inclusive ecosystems’. Movie: The Veins of the City. Every(body) is Urbanism. The Green Metropolis.

Credits: Concept: The Why Factory (TU Delft) ‘Roots of Rebirth’ SS21: Atelier Iris van Herpen Animation and Edit: WielandStudio | Eline Wieland Origional Soundtrack: Salvador Breed and Maarten Vos Origional Particles Animation: Shy.Studio Design Valley Building: MVRDV 3D Model Valley Building: MVRDV 2022 © Sapiens

The Why Factory is part of the exhibition: MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio explores the archive of architecture office MVRDV. Het Nieuwe Instituut displays the MVRDV archive as a living entity in office spaces, rather than in museum galleries. As a working environment, the office is the place where ideas and projects move fluidly back and forth between present, past and future.

Calling all visionaries includes fragments of: Porocity, Wego, Manifesta Marseille Workshop, Green Dip, Sky City and From AMS to AM5

Plan your visit between: 06 Nov 2021 — 04 Sep 2022

 

 

On Thursday November 4th between 15:00 and 16:30, the students of The Why Factory will present their final presentation of the MSc1 Design Studio: Pixel Planet: From XXS to XXL, a fully modular & adaptable world.

Prefabricated design goes beyond most of what we think we know about pods, containers, modules, and joints. Pixel Planet aims at revising and up-cycling the prefab modular cell. On that score, we will analyze units, measure their performances and script the design of buildings, cities and the entire Planet by combining simple cells. This economy of resources simplifies the actions on complex contexts (from analyzing the performances of the unit, to scripting and evaluating buildings, blocks, cities, or the World).

Working with standard objects means modular thinking, where a composite system based on repeated elements can be used to implement large scale interventions. Departing from the traditional optimization of the building components and the housing unit, we want to move forward into the research about modularity and its advantages from the point of view of sustainability. Pixel Planet will research on standardization, flexibility, automation, adaptability, and evolution through time.
Moreover, if our Planet can be understood as an object of design, we aim at repositioning the prefabrication industry of the 21st Century. Can we turn landscape into pixels, or better, into their three-dimensional version: voxels? How do we script a forest, a beach, a desert, an ocean or a cloud, and evaluate and optimize their functioning? Can we even make all those the voxels fly?

Students are invited to work collectively throughout the semester. Scripting, gaming and visualization tools will be used to design a planet of simple, measurable and performative cells, Previous software knowledge is not required, but recommended.
Students’ work will be part of a film to be shown in different venues to be determined.

 

 

But our Planet can’t wait: we need to accelerate research and become truly circular. How can we help such ‘pixel’ industry make better architectures and better environments? Can we develop a true pixel economy that makes the users’ life more cost effective? Shall we develop a true pixel ecology that makes life on Earth more CO2 reductive? How about a pixel society where living in pixels is ideal? Let’s create a true utopia, a Pixeltopia.

In the Spring 2022, the Why Factory’s MSc2 design studio Pixeltopia will explore prefabricated housing that allows for more future lifestyles, as well as the use of modular prefabricated systems for other uses (work, farming, leisure, energy production, water management, etc.).

During the studio, students will develop scripting tools for collaborative design methods allowing users to participate in the design of flexible facades and floor plans, capable to adapt over time to everchanging needs. We will explore the potential of cantilevering methods so as to integrate unexpected functions in the ground floor, and flexible stairs, corridors, lifts and shafts permitting prefabricated architectures to evolve. All designs will undergo the evaluation of their objective performances (from CO2 emissions, to energetic performances, cost assessment or circularity criteria).

Only by calculating those performances, and adapting architecture to the fulfillment of the circularity agenda can we assure that Pixeltopia will come true.

 

In an interview with Dezeen for the Dezeen 15 digital festival. Winy Maas proposes covering the planet with a new inhabitable geological layer called The Sponge.

For the full interview click here.

 

THE NEW OLD
Envisioning the future of our past

The New Old is a research by The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) in collaboration with the Master of City and Technology at IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Spain).

The research explores what ‘Old’ means, what will become ‘Old’ in the future and how to manage everything that due to technological, social or cultural changes will soon become obsolete. By understanding the location, size and timeline of the soon-to-become-obsolete, we envisioned its future. ‘Re’ actions on the ‘Old’, such as ‘Re-moving’, ‘Re-using’, ‘Re-locating’ or ‘Re-membering’, to name just a few, let us understand what the New Old will be and how it will look like.

The Why Factory
Winy Maas, Javier Arpa Fernández, Adrien Ravon, Lex te Loo

Ifrah Ariff: Exhibition Layout

Students (The Why Factory): Yousra Ahllache, Jorn Beltman, Juliette Brouwer, Olivia Dolan, Dorsa Ghaemi, Mieneke Jongert, Reinier Kok, Sophie Koopman, Eva Maarleveld, Aga Omastka, Ivan Pashov, Marnix Prins, Matteo Tiraboschi, Rik van de Wijgert, Zwaan van der Scheer, Dino Vojvodić, Lucas Zarzoso Hueck

Students (IAAC): Adriana Aguirre Such, Arina Novikova, Alvaro Cerezo Carrizo, Dongxuan Zhu, Hebah Qatanany, Iñigo Esteban Marina, Juan Pablo Pintado Miranda, Kevin Aragón, Diana Roussi, Kshama Patil, Laura Guimarães, Leyla Saadi, Mario González, Marta Maria Galdys, Matteo Murat, Aishath Nadh Ha Naseer, Riccardo Palazzolo Henkes, Sasan Bahrami, Simone Grasso, Sinay Coskun, Sridhar Subramani, Stefania-Maria Kousoula, Tugdual Sarazin, Miguel Tinoco Hdz, Iván Reyes Cano

“Wegocity: Tailor-Made Housing” investigates participatory processes applied to housing design. These processes establish a negotiation between the desires of each of the residents of a housing slab and help determine the design of their apartments. To achieve this, “Wegocity” manifests a particular interest in the development of a gaming process. This game leverages the specificities of each resident and transforms them into spatial needs. This way, unexpected housing typologies emerge within a truly human-driven housing architecture.

“Wegocity” will compile the research undertaken by The Why Factory together with students from TU Delft and IIT Chicago, RMIT Melbourne and Bezalel Academy Jerusalem. The research begins with the acknowledgment that even though we have measured and compared almost all that can be quantified (areas, densities, uses, users…), we had avoided getting to the bottom of the matter, to the bottom of the wishing well that housing represents to its residents. We know that the dense city must be built, but while building the city, we cannot forget the desires of every individual and their dream home: the home of the user who will put their name on their letterbox.

By: Winy Maas, Adrien Ravon, Arend van Waart, Felix Madrazo Charles Ducerisier, Chun Hoi Hui, Francesco Barone, Félix Borel, Iason Stathatos, Javier López-Menchero Ortiz de Salazar, Lucile Dugal, Marek Nosek, Matteo Pavanello, Niels Baljet, Olga Terzi, Prokop Matej, Tarryn Leeferink, Wen Jun Tan, Woo Soojung, Zichen Liu, Loes thijssen

Working with standard objects means modular thinking, where a composite system based on repeated elements can be used to implement large scale interventions. Departing from the traditional optimization of the building components and the housing unit, we want to move forward into the research about modularity and its advantages from the point of view of sustainability. Pixel Planet will research on standardization, flexibility, automation, adaptability, and evolution through time.
Moreover, if our Planet can be understood as an object of design, we aim at repositioning the prefabrication industry of the 21st Century. Can we turn landscape into pixels, or better, into their three-dimensional version: voxels? How do we script a forest, a beach, a desert, an ocean or a cloud, and evaluate and optimize their functioning? Can we even make all those the voxels fly?

Students are invited to work collectively throughout the semester. Scripting, gaming and visualization tools will be used to design a planet of simple, measurable and performative cells, Previous software knowledge is not required, but recommended.
Students’ work will be part of a film to be shown in different venues to be determined.

 

Working with standard objects means modular thinking, where a composite system based on repeated elements can be used to implement large scale interventions. Departing from the traditional optimization of the building components and the housing unit, we want to move forward into the research about modularity and its advantages from the point of view of sustainability. Pixel Planet will research on standardization, flexibility, automation, adaptability, and evolution through time.
Moreover, if our Planet can be understood as an object of design, we aim at repositioning the prefabrication industry of the 21st Century. Can we turn landscape into pixels, or better, into their three-dimensional version: voxels? How do we script a forest, a beach, a desert, an ocean or a cloud, and evaluate and optimize their functioning? Can we even make all those the voxels fly?

Students are invited to work collectively throughout the semester. Scripting, gaming and visualization tools will be used to design a planet of simple, measurable and performative cells, Previous software knowledge is not required, but recommended.
Students’ work will be part of a film to be shown in different venues to be determined.

 

The New Old: Rethinking the future of the past – IAAC Blog

What Is Old?

In order to define what will be the New Old of the near future, we must understand what makes things become Old. We have to look into our past to understand what are the layers we are on top of. What happens with the past and what do we do with it? In the contemporary context – as humanity develops- we need to meet our demands. There is friction created between our endless growth and the limited sources of our planet. We are in a crisis of choice and the awareness of a place -for a replacement that goes beyond orthodoxy- is the ultimate tool for changes. Is It about how much space and cost of opportunity could be created in this process of understanding the past. As we keep evolving, do we keep leaving traces? and how do we handle it? in the context of the lifespan in a timeline, things constantly become old.

What is Old?

The Atlas Of The Old

We made a list of all the things will be becoming Old in the future. After creating this list, we filtered them by choosing the ones that had more potential to be analyzed. Then we have categorized them, first in time, defining 4 different bins from a large time scale to the more recent one.

The selection from the List of the Old

Categorizing Time

We were interested in comparing the trends of the topics through time, it means the impact of each item and be able to locate all of them in the same graphic. We define de X axes as time, but the question was how could we define the Y one. In order to do that we have defined the Y axis as the Historical Trend Value in percentage. That means that we show the volumen, the quantity, the amount of usage by society or the point of development of the topic traduced in percentage through time.Each item reach the 100% in the moment of history where they have had their momentum.

Historical Trending Volume vs. Years

Timelines of the New Old

With this information we could frame the Timeline for each concept.For instance, when there was more ice on the planet?, when did people use more the car? or when  did retail achieve the maximum market value in history?Through this methodology we are able to compare all the topics with a systematic approach, even if they don´t bellow to the same nature. This allows us to use this common metric and add to the timeline inspite of the topic.

Timelines of the New Old: Eons, Milleniums, Centuries & Decades

Mapping the Old

After this categorization, we defined a new type of categorization regarding the scale of each topic: From XL to S. The aim was to map all the future New Old to be aware of its size and amount of space that they will be occupying. In that sense, the comparison between scale and size was represented by how many Italies this Old would become, since Italy has always been the representation of obsession of protection.

From XL to S

A new Atlas

As a result, we obtained an Atlas of the New Old of the Future where we could represent the impact of the future obsolescence of things.

The Atlas of The New Old

The New Old

What could be done with the old? If we could visualize our reality without these new olds, what would be the impact of their absence? In order to comprehend the magnitude of this void, we firstly blacked out the objects on their existing context and pointed out the amount of space they globally occupy.

Subsequently, our idea was to reinterpret the existence of the old, by giving it back some meaning, whether to the object itself or to the related space. Based on that, we introduced the concept of the Re-s: a prefix that means “back” or “again”. After identifying a list of possible approaches, we narrowed down to the four most likely scenarios of imagining a future for the new old. In order to define a clear methodology, we applied the same four strategies to all the olds we have researched about.

The Re-s selection

The first Re we explored was the idea of Removing, in a sense that once you erase the object, you bring back the old memory of how the space used to be without it, reestablishing its original state. This action brings the reflection of what is the importance of this old, and if it should continue to exist and play a role in our everyday lives. If not, should it be remembered? Do we want to keep the memory of it in its existing location or transform it into an exhibit?

Once the object loses its function, another option would be to reuse its infrastructure or materials for a new purpose, in line with the new global necessities. According to Lavoisier, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed. Lastly, we reflected on whether this object still belongs to its original place. Thus, could we relocate something that has become old in order to give it a new meaning elsewhere?

Before, Blackout, Remove, Remember, Reuse, Relocate

The New Old: Rethinking the Future of Our Past is a project of IAAC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in City & Technology in 2020/21 by students: Adriana Aguirre Such, Arina Novikova, Alvaro Cerezo Carrizo,  Dongxuan Zhu, Hebah Qatanany, Iñigo Esteban Marina, Juan Pablo Pintado Miranda, Kevin Aragón, Diana Roussi, Kshama Patil, Laura Guimarães, Leyla Saadi, Mario González, Marta Maria Galdys, Matteo Murat, Aishath Nadh Ha Naseer, Riccardo Palazzolo Henkes, Sasan Bahrami, Simone Grasso, Sinay Coskun, Sridhar Subramani, Stefania-Maria Kousoula, Tugdual Sarazin, Miguel Tinoco Hdz, Iván Reyes Cano, and faculty: Winy Maas, Javier Arpa, Adrien Ravon, Lex te Loo.

Le Grand Puzzle proposes a methodology, an agenda, and an analysis to portray today’s Marseille and can be perceived as a ‘manifesto’ for the city. “Le Grand Puzzle shows the incredible urban possibilities and impossibilities of Marseille, through conversations, analyses, maps and ideas”, says Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV and director of The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology). “It forms an urban portrait of Marseille; a constructive mirror to Marseille.” The study is commissioned as a foundational base of and by Manifesta 13, which due to COVID-19 launches its series of projects gradually this weekend in Marseille.

 

Heritage is meant to embody the values and collective memory of a whole society. However, buildings, museums or monuments, conceived as manifestations of national pride and glory increasingly confront us with a problematic past. These symbols tell stories of conquest, victory and heroism, while simultaneously representing narratives of repression, racism or even genocide… Should we keep erecting monuments? Or can they adapt to new circumstances as social relations evolve? What makes a monument ‘a monument’ in different parts of the World?

But there is a lot more to heritage than the immovable cultural heritage, and, as time goes by, it will keep growing endlessly: from the movable heritage (paintings, sculptures, coins, manuscripts, data…), to the intangible heritage (oral traditions, performing arts, rituals) and the natural heritage (natural sites, cultural landscapes, physical or geological formations, biological hotspots…), etc.

How will we deal in the future with the past that has yet to come? What will be the new monuments?

In the meantime, cities strive to have entire districts included in the UNESCO World Heritage List with the hope of boosting income from the thriving tourist industry. To what extent do preservation regulations “freeze” the urban environment? How do heritage-hungry tourists impact the daily lives of local populations? Should we copy heritage and paste it in a new location so as to control mass tourism?

During the upcoming workshop at IAAC we will respond to these and many more questions about ‘the old’ by means of analyzing heritage from a multitude of points of view so as to be able to calculate and visualize what the future past will be.

 

Kunnen we de verwachte bevolkingsgroei gebruiken om een voorbeeldstad te ontwikkelen? De komende 30 jaar groeit de Nederlandse bevolking tot 5 miljoen mensen. Wat als ze (deels) in Amsterdam zouden worden gehuisvest? Dan zou de stad net zo dichtbevolkt zijn als Parijs. The Why Factory / TU Delft ontwikkelde met een groep van 50 masterstudenten onder leiding van Winy Maas een verzameling ideeën die laten zien hoe Amsterdam er in zo’n toekomst uit zou kunnen zien. Een dichte, inclusieve, toegankelijke, zelfvoorzienende, biodiverse, blauwe, open, historische, productieve, gezonde en circulaire metropool.

 

De komende 30 jaar groeit de Nederlandse bevolking tot 5 miljoen mensen. Wat als ze (deels) in Amsterdam zouden worden gehuisvest? Dan zou de stad net zo dichtbevolkt zijn als Parijs. The Why Factory / TU Delft ontwikkelde met een groep van 50 masterstudenten onder leiding van Winy Maas en in samenwerking met het AMS instituut een verzameling ideeën die laten zien hoe Amsterdam er in zo’n toekomst uit zou kunnen zien. Een dichte, inclusieve, toegankelijke, zelfvoorzienende, biodiverse, blauwe, open, historische, productieve, gezonde en circulaire metropool.

Volg de presentatie op 1 dec live: https://dezwijger.nl/programma/from-ams-to-am5/?flush=true

 

 

 

Heritage is meant to embody the values and collective memory of a whole society. However, buildings, museums or monuments, conceived as manifestations of national pride and glory increasingly confront us with a problematic past. These symbols tell stories of conquest, victory and heroism, while simultaneously representing narratives of repression, racism or even genocide… Should we keep erecting monuments? Or can they adapt to new circumstances as social relations evolve? What makes a monument ‘a monument’ in different parts of the World?

But there is a lot more to heritage than the immovable cultural heritage, and, as time goes by, it will keep growing endlessly: from the movable heritage (paintings, sculptures, coins, manuscripts, data…), to the intangible heritage (oral traditions, performing arts, rituals) and the natural heritage (natural sites, cultural landscapes, physical or geological formations, biological hotspots…), etc.

How will we deal in the future with the past that has yet to come? What will be the new monuments?

In the meantime, cities strive to have entire districts included in the UNESCO World Heritage List with the hope of boosting income from the thriving tourist industry. To what extent do preservation regulations “freeze” the urban environment? How do heritage-hungry tourists impact the daily lives of local populations? Should we copy heritage and paste it in a new location so as to control mass tourism?

During our MSc2 Design Studio we will respond to these and many more questions about ‘the old’ by means of analyzing heritage from a multitude of points of view so as to be able to calculate and visualize what the future past will be.

 

The book is the result of intensive research – made from 2018 to the start of 2020 – by an international team of architects and urbanists from MVRDV and The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology), in collaboration with Manifesta 13 and representatives of both Marseille institutions and universities. Le Grand Puzzle proposes a methodology, an agenda, and an analysis to portray today’s Marseille and can be perceived as a ‘manifesto’ for the city. “Le Grand Puzzle shows the incredible urban possibilities and impossibilities of Marseille, through conversations, analyses, maps and ideas”, says Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV and director of The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology). “It forms an urban portrait of Marseille; a constructive mirror to Marseille.” The study is commissioned as a foundational base of and by Manifesta 13, which due to COVID-19 launches its series of projects gradually this weekend in Marseille.

Marseille was founded by Armenians, Italians, Spanish, North-African Jews, and French Algerian migrants, among others. They founded Marseille as the emblem of the multicultural city of the future, where identity is not its first priority. One is Marseillais more than one is French: nous sommes tous d’ici et d’ailleurs.

Le Grand Puzzle was commissioned as the foundational base of Manifesta 13 Marseille, as an alternative model of creative mediation that serves both as a blueprint for Marseille to plan its future and as a research framework to ensure that Manifesta 13 has a long-lasting impact on the city and its citizens to come. It started by extracting a theoretical framework by means of a list of “wishes” for the future city from the global, European, and local agendas. Marseille is seen from various perspectives: the research study contains interviews with myriad stakeholders, extensive cartography of the city based on comparisons with other European (port) cities, and a deluge of urban interventions and fantasies imagined by students of art, architecture and urbanism – the next generation who will run the cities. These fantasies, when built, could be a true urban catalyst for – and a manifestation of – a post COVID-19 city.

Through the immediate housing crisis in Marseille in November 2019, Le Grand Puzzle called for an alternative intervention as an immediate motivation for the development of a new programme called Le Tour de Tous les Possibles, an experiment of alternative forms of civil participation. The project, which is still running throughout and as part of the biennial programme of 2020, brings together citizens from across Marseille, connecting diverse groups of participants from different social and cultural backgrounds and generations, such as activists and representatives of civil society.

The main ambition of Le Tour de Tous les Possibles, as part of the legacy of Manifesta 13, is to investigate collaborative methods of work to create new alliances and experiment with alternative models of co-existence, while exploring the potential challenges of Marseille’s communal future. These 22 workshops held in the pre-biennial period will continue with 10 workshops to come, hopefully leading to the founding of a real functioning Citizen Council called Assemblée de Tous les Possibles, where 101 Citizens are selected by luck of the draw to advise the Mayor of Marseille and the City Council of Marseille.

“Marseille is a city of flux, transit and trade. It responds to a diversity of contradictory connotations. So it offers a rare prism we can use to investigate multiple questions that are crucial to Europe’s future and current crises”, says Winy Maas. “Our research was an exciting challenge and complex journey. This research is a base to trigger discussions on how we want to live and to reflect on ideas about how to transform the city. We are grateful for all of those who shared their stories with us, opened up their institutions’ doors and gave us the support we needed to understand the complex puzzle that is Marseille.”

The study, named “Le Grand Puzzle” is the second pre-biennial urban research project commissioned by Manifesta, following their previous iteration in Palermo, Italy. It forms the foundation of Manifesta 13 Marseille’s new model of creative mediation, serving both as a blueprint for Marseille to plan its future and as a research framework to ensure that Manifesta 13 impacts the city and its citizens in the long-term.

Among a series of dozens of events, openings, and tours, both online and on location in Marseille, spread over three days, Winy Maas will be present in two key events during Manifesta 13’s opening weekend: first, the biennial’s opening press conference at 11:30 am CEST on Friday August 28; then again at 11:30 am CEST on Saturday August 29 as part of a panel discussion on Le Grand Puzzle alongside Marseille’s Mayor.

Manifesta 13 Opening Press Conference
Time and date: Friday August 28, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm CEST
Location: Online event streamed via Vimeo

Le Grand Puzzle: The Panel
Time and date: Saturday August 29, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm CEST
Location: Online event streamed via Vimeo

To see the full agenda for the opening weekend of Manifesta 13, visit the Manifesta website here or the event on Facebook here.

 

The co-founder and principal architect of MVDRV discussed his studio’s work with Dezeen’s founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

Other creatives featured in our Screentime series include dean of the Pratt Institute School of Architecture Harriet Harriss, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel, The World Around curator Beatrice Galilee, filmmaker Gary Hustwit and British-Israeli architect Ron Arad.

This Screentime conversation is sponsored by Enscape, a virtual reality and real-time rendering plugin for architectural design programme Autodesk Revit.

Virtual Design Festival is the world’s first online design festival, taking place from 15 April to 10 July.

 

Next Fall Semester, The Why Factory and AMS (Amsterdam Metropolitan Solutions) will celebrate a design studio aimed at exploring ideas for the future of the city and its metropolitan region.

Join our Q&A on The Why Factory MSc1 Studio Fall 2020
Time: Apr 23, 2020 01:00 PM Paris

Join Zoom Meeting at
https://zoom.us/j/91906236317

Meeting ID: 919 0623 6317

More information:

https://www.tudelft.nl/en/education/programmes/masters/architecture-urbanism-and-building-sciences/msc-architecture-urbanism-and-building-sciences/master-tracks/architecture/programme/studios/the-why-factory/

Students will propose a myriad interventions gathered on a giant phisical model of 25 x 9 m or a digital one that will be presented to the city. We will look at Amsterdam through our lenses for the Future City: a healthy, green, dense, accessible, intimate, open or free city.
During the design studio, students will produce a vast array of ideas for the city, from immediate actions to long term interventions. We will start by analyzing Amsterdam’s beauty, particularities and challenges by means of digital mapping and visualizations. Subsequently, we will will produce interventions to show how Amsterdam can become an even better place to live.
Students will produce a multitude of physical or digital models that explore all the potentials of the city. All the models will be tested at scale 1:500 on a giant 25 x 9 m table, and will be thoroughly documented for further dissemination. Students will also produce visualizations showing the impact of their interventions. ‘1000 Ideas for Amsterdam’ serves as an open, accessible and visible exploration of the participating students with teachers, experts and local actors of the themes, fantasies and ideas for the future of Amsterdam as a unique place in Europe.
This physical or digital model will be used for testing and illustrating directions and extend ideas. It will serve as a base to generate discussion with the international and local public, leading to a series of conversations, talks and debates about the future of Amsterdam. ‘1000 Ideas for Amsterdam’ is a base to engage all stakeholders participating in the construction of AMS

MVRDV co-founder and principal architect Winy Maas for The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology) is giving a lecture for the IAAC Lecture Series 2019/20, Barcelona, on Monday 10 February. The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) is a centre for research, education, production and outreach, with the mission of envisioning the future habitat of our society and building it in the present. IAAC runs an international IAAC Lecture Series in which architects and experts from a variety of different disciplines present their work at IAAC. In this context, Winy Maas, in a collaboration between The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology) / IAAC Faculty will give his lecture “Everything is Landscape”.

Date: 10 February 2020, 19:30h

Location: IAAC Auditorium, Barcelona

Find out more.
Read here about the workshop “The Green Dip, So What? The atlas of a green dipped planet”.

Workshop at IAAC Barcelona @iaacbcn

The Green Dip, So What?
The atlas of a green dipped planet.

Adrien Ravon presented the green dip and future cities at the GEVEL 2020 fair in Rotterdam.

What if we cover all cities with a thick layer of green? Everything! From roofs, facades and streets, to interior walls, floors and even furniture. We have combined the knowledge of plants and buildings in The Green Dip Maker. We know what strategies on buildings we can use, and which elements can hold how much plant material. We can select the correct species for the right biomes. We know the weight of the green hats, coats, socks,how much water it needs, when it flowers and how it effects our buildings. Now our cities can be totally green.

Het ABC Architectuurcentrum Haarlem bestaat dit jaar 30 jaar. Het centrum viert dat onder meer met de organisatie van drie bijzondere lezingen (‘Masterclasses’) door drie Nederlandse  toparchitecten: Ben van Berkel (UNStudio), Francine Houben (Mecanoo) en Winy Maas (MVRDV). De lezingen van Ben van Berkel en Francine Houben hebben reeds plaatsgevonden op 15 oktober respectievelijk 19 november jongstleden. De ‘Masterclass’ van Winy Maas is op maandagavond 20 januari 2020 van 20.00-22.00 uur en vindt plaats in de Kleine Zaal van de Philharmonie, Lange Begijnestraat 11, Haarlem. Kaarten á € 15 zijn te reserveren aan de kassa van de Philharmonie, via website www.theater-haarlem.nl of telefonisch 023 – 512 12 12.

 

https://www.architectuurhaarlem.nl/activiteit/winy-maas-mvrdv-javier-arpa-fernandez-thewhyfactory?fbclid=IwAR2WD5RoRSJSEexde2LVjTfG4Ox1GVkraoVE5G_5EGGW-tyjD32eb7feuaA

 

Field trip to Shenzhen and specifically Qianhai.

We will develop a collection of speculative ideas for the future of Qianhai, critically imagining plausible circumstances that may emerge from the potential implications of GBA initiative. The purpose here is simple, to open up a conversation around the nature of the urban futures ahead.

The workshop Qianhai 2.0 organize by The Why Factory (Delft University of Technology) will look to use the occasion of the Greater Bay Area undertaking as a point of departure for an exercise in intensive design speculation—imagining wholly novel urban futures that may emerge from this initiative.

We will develop a collection of speculative ideas for the future of Qianhai, critically imagining plausible circumstances that may emerge from the potential implications of GBA initiative. The purpose here is simple, to open up a conversation around the nature of the urban futures ahead.

If we want to face the climate crisis, let’s start by finding answers to some what’s, why’s and how’s.

Why Green?
The Why Green chapter discusses six urban urgencies which greening cities can address: The urban heatisland effect, air pollution, sinking cities, noise pollution, more frequent extreme weather, decrease in biodiversity.

The Green Maker
The Green Maker combines the knowledge of buildings with the knowledge of plants. A set of 9 strategies can be chosen to dip any base typology in green. A catalog of parametric elements allows for grasses, shrubs, and trees to be placed on any surface in on and around buildings. Knowledge of biomes ensures that only native plants can be used per site. And finally a database of 4500 plants including their water needs, total weight, maximum height, oxygen production and co2 absorption are included.

Green Cities
Watch the green maker dip a 1000m x 1000m section of Dubai, New York, Moscow and Mumbai into a thick layer of plants.

 

The towers were built during a five-day workshop organized in collaboration between The Why Factory, TUDelft and Chiba Institute of Technology Students proposed a method to prove that urban porosity is socially, environmentally and economically valuable. By looking at how to measure urban porosity, this method aims to promote the capacity of the three-dimensional pixel (the so-called ‘voxel’) for both measuring and evaluating the relative porosity of any built form as well as for negotiating design.

 

Photo: Tayama Tatsuyuki
Photo Courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Click here for more information on the exhibition.

 

The Green Dip refers to the physical architectural strategies used to incorporate plants into buildings. The students will research several questions: Why green? What are its capacities? What performances? How can Green be implemented to our cities? Can we create a database with plant species? Can we create a software to help us do it? Can we invent a series of green elements to be implemented? What would be the next step?

According to some researches, if the World borders would open and populations could move freely, the Netherlands should be able to host a population of 54 million people.

How would the country look like? What would Amsterdam in particular look like if its Metropolitan Region was to be populated by 20 million people? How to design hyper density? How can landscape support such pressure? Can we design a software capable to anticipate how Amsterdam will be?

Together with the AMS Institute, the Why Factory students will research the urbanisms resulting from applying such scenario of massive population growth, from the scale of the Netherlands to the scale of Amsterdam. How to build housing that fulfils the needs of the city’s residents and meet such density requirements? How to make the city still livable? What mobility will be like in such a scenario? What does Nature have to say?

Urban density is the best tool to contain CO2 emissions, but while building the dense city we shouldn’t forget the citizens who will inhabit it. On that score, during the studio, students will build a 200 m2 physical model at the AMS site, containing a myriad of ideas for the citizens of Amsterdam to test. The giant will be exhibited at a public venue in the city and will serve to activate a public debate about the future of the city amongst residents, students, policy makers, designers and all agents involved in the fabrication of the city.
Students will need to travel to Amsterdam for studio sessions at AMS on a regular basis (most likely once a week).

The Green Dip refers to the physical architectural strategies used to incorporate plants into buildings. The students will research several questions: Why green? What are its capacities? What performances? How can Green be implemented to our cities? Can we create a database with plant species? Can we create a software to help us do it? Can we invent a series of green elements to be implemented? What would be the next step?

The Green Dip

The green dip refers to the physical architectural strategies used to incorporate plants into buildings. These strategies have been broken down into nine strategies which include green sticking, perching, dripping, lifting, the green hat, green infilling, camouflaging, scooping, and green timber. While many of these practices are age-old, many have been given new life due to the aforementioned real estate incentives as well as anxieties surrounding climate change. Other strategies are entirely new, a function of new technologies and
building practices.

The Green Fashion

Throughout history and across the world flora has been integrated into architecture of all scales. From the tropical jungles of southern Asia to the alpine tundra of Scandinavia, builders across generations have used plants not just as structural materials (i.e., timber) but also as ornament designed to wonder and delight. In recent times, while greenery has increasingly been adopted as a real estate selling point, it has also started becoming vital to building environment systems. From cooling to solar protection and sound mitigation, greenery has become a practical addition to buildings across the planet.

The Green Alibi

Green has been adopted by real estate developers as a selling point. The idea that a person can live in an urban area and still have personal access to “nature” is increasingly popular as urban populations rise.Often these projects incorporate green in a superficial fashion, ignoring the local biome and environment.

The Green Trolls

People have become aware of the “insincerity” of contemporary greening. Critics rightly view greening as an attempt to increase property values on the part of developers, essentially profiting from anxieties around climate change. Often developments heavily incorporating green are in the luxury category, unavailable for the majority of the community.

The Green Visions

While there is considerable cynicism concerning greening buildings due to the vicissitudes of capitalism, there remains a genuine vision of an urban future harmonizing with nature.Often seen in science fiction and fantasy, ideas of a green utopia stretch back centuries in fiction. More serious proposals have also been prominent throughout history, with the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller drawing up ideas of the ideal green future.

With a big bang, the students presented 66 new planets concluding the Planet Maker 2 Studio.

Can we simulate possible scenarios which can change the planet? How to script those future planet scenarios? What do we need to know to achieve this? Who are our key planet actors? How to test their needs and capacities? How to track the reaction of other actors to a single hypothesis?How to detect the places that need close attention? Can we predict new planet thresholds based on conflict mapping? What kind of gaming system is needed? How do these planets look and why? How this affects the future of our cities?

A collaboration between TU Delft and RMIT Melbourne.

Teachers: Winy Maas, Vivian Mitsogianni, Felix Madrazo, Ben Milbourne, Lex te Loo

Futrue Models: Hans Hoogenboom, Piruz Nourian, Karim Daw, Shervin Azadi

Students: Alex Hewitson, Anneloes van Slooten, Bowen Chen, Chris Benning, Huudat Nguyen, Kevin van Weerdenburg, Leonardo Traverso, Maaike Mossinkoff, Minnie CHU, Ton van Giessen, Yanjie Liu, Yingda Sui, Ziou Gao

 

 

 

 

This lecture takes place at the Kunsthal (Rotterdam)

Tickets are required* and can purchased here

*for those not participating in the INDESEM workshop

Our planet is subject to dramatic climate change that requires all of us to speed up action in order to save it. But we are so slow… The depletion of natural resources is accelerating tremendously. Huge income disparities create enormous social tensions. Moving populations demand for action. Rampant desertification demands forests. Exponential population growth requires more products, more food, more oxygen, more energy, more water, better waste treatment. We need an agenda for change. An agenda to be implemented. Now! That together form and make the future city.

The Why Factory graduation studio invites students to explore their own fascination. Together they define the next agenda for future cities. Can our cities be truly green? Can they be fully adaptable? Can they be healthy? Welcoming? Diverse? Can they rely on air transportation, on free mobility? Can they be fully automated? Fully transparent? Can they be free, open, and democratic?
The goal of the studio is to guide students to develop strong individual proposals and a collective research. The studio will not only focus on one existing city, but rather explore an atlas of cities in order to compare and stress the implementation of those topics in different realities. The Why Factory methodology is supported by the Future Models seminar bringing expertise in the field of computation, design process and visual thinking.

We believe that the future city appears on all levels, on all scales. From XXS to XXL and vice versa. From better materials, to better facades, to better houses, better cities and a better world. Yes, everything is urbanism!

 

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This fall semester (2019/20) The Why Factory will offer MSc3/4 Making Future Cities, The Next Agenda. For more information please join the studio information meeting on the 16th of April in room K during lunchtime. Our planet is subject to dramatic climate change that requires all of us to speed up action in order to save it. But we are so slow… The depletion of natural resources is accelerating tremendously. Huge income disparities create enormous social tensions. Moving populations demand for action. Rampant desertification demands forests. Exponential population growth requires more products, more food, more oxygen, more energy, more water, better waste treatment. We need an agenda for change. An agenda to be implemented. Now! That together form and make the future city. The Why Factory graduation studio invites students to explore their own fascination. Together they define the next agenda for future cities. Can our cities be truly green? Can they be fully adaptable? Can they be healthy? Welcoming? Diverse? Can they rely on air transportation, on free mobility? Can they be fully automated? Fully transparent? Can they be free, open, and democratic? The goal of the studio is to guide students to develop strong individual proposals and a collective research. The studio will not only focus on one existing city, but rather explore an atlas of cities in order to compare and stress the implementation of those topics in different realities. The Why Factory methodology is supported by the Future Models seminar bringing expertise in the field of computation, design process and visual thinking. We believe that the future city appears on all levels, on all scales. From XXS to XXL and vice versa. From better materials, to better facades, to better houses, better cities and a better world. Yes, everything is urbanism! . . . . . #futurecity #architecture #graduation #planets #change #visions #green #adaptable #fascination

A post shared by The Why Factory by Winy Maas (@thewhyfactory_winy.maas) on Apr 9, 2019 at 2:45am PDT

The futuristic transportation tunnels of Elan Musk snaking beneith Los Angeles, like underground waterslides forming an high-speed public transportation system will very soon be reality. The first flying cars are being available on the commercial market. Commercial orbit flights are around the corner which creates the connection New York – London in under half an hour…

Aircity wants to take a look beyond those innovations, and envision the technologies that will allow for a truly new mobility around our planet. Is it really the Monorail or Hyperloop which will fundamentally change the future of mobility? Or can we look at it in a different way? While these huge infrastructure projects take up enormous amount of land in our cities and hence the Earth’s habitable surface, it is time to think about the next step. What if we do not need any infrastructure? What if we can move up, down, left, right, rotate, revolve in any direction at any time? What if we could fly?

Aircity builds up from the SkyCity studio offered by the Why Factory in the Fall 2018 and is an invitation to speculate on which technologies can enable us to fly. Drones, Magnetics, Balloons, Jetpacks, or even Nano technology. What would be the implications of such a revolution? Will we need capsules for that? Will we need buildings? What new typologies will emerge? How will those technologies shape our cities? Can we script a software to help us design these new spaces? Can we create a VR-experience to feel how it is like in such a new air city?

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This fall semester (2019/20) The Why Factory will offer MSc1 Air City, Living in the Sky. For more information please join the studio information meeting on the 16th of April in room K during lunchtime. The futuristic transportation tunnels of Elan Musk snaking beneith Los Angeles, like underground waterslides forming an high-speed public transportation system will very soon be reality. The first flying cars are being available on the commercial market. Commercial orbit flights are around the corner which creates the connection New York – London in under half an hour… Aircity wants to take a look beyond those innovations, and envision the technologies that will allow for a truly new mobility around our planet. Is it really the Monorail or Hyperloop which will fundamentally change the future of mobility? Or can we look at it in a different way? While these huge infrastructure projects take up enormous amount of land in our cities and hence the Earth’s habitable surface, it is time to think about the next step. What if we do not need any infrastructure? What if we can move up, down, left, right, rotate, revolve in any direction at any time? What if we could fly? Aircity builds up from the SkyCity studio offered by the Why Factory in the Fall 2018 and is an invitation to speculate on which technologies can enable us to fly. Drones, Magnetics, Balloons, Jetpacks, or even Nano technology. What would be the implications of such a revolution? Will we need capsules for that? Will we need buildings? What new typologies will emerge? How will those technologies shape our cities? Can we script a software to help us design these new spaces? Can we create a VR-experience to feel how it is like in such a new air city? Artwork by @twf_skycity . . . . . #futurecity #mobility #flying #skycity #architecture #flyingcity #project #studio #education #fly #Infrastructure

A post shared by The Why Factory by Winy Maas (@thewhyfactory_winy.maas) on Apr 3, 2019 at 8:34am PDT

 

Introducing “Nature” in our cities is one of the defining trends of twenty first century urbanism, but there is little agreement about how urban nature is to be designed, planned and managed.

Having overcome the antagonism between rural producers and urban consumers, we want to search for new pacts between city and nature. We believe green is much more than an aesthetic alibi, much more than a passive response to the occupation of territory.

The Green Dip is an ambitious research project that will study the implementation of “green” in different climates throughout the world, showing how we can cover roofs, terraces, balconies, and facades with vegetation. What species can grow? How much soil do they need? How much water do they need and how much can they store? How much maintenance do they need and how much repair? What is the effect on the sun and wind orientation? What is the impact of height?… We want to measure how these new ecosystems derived from the implementation of “green” inside architecture benefit us. Can we evaluate/quantify ecosystem services? What do they provide us with (food, fresh water, fish, pollination…)? What can they contribute to regulate (climate regulation, disease regulation, flood regulation, store carbon, clean air, water purification…)? What cultural aspects do they enhance (aesthetic, spiritual, educational, recreational…)? What’s their direct economic value?… Finally, how will these buildings look like? How will the city look like? Let’s dip our planet in a vast jungle: The Green Dip.

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This fall semester (2019/20) The Why Factory will offer MSc1 The Green Dip, Covering the City with a Forest. For more information please join the studio information meeting on the 16th of April in room K during lunchtime Introducing “Nature” in our cities is one of the defining trends of twenty first century urbanism, but there is little agreement about how urban nature is to be designed, planned and managed. Having overcome the antagonism between rural producers and urban consumers, we want to search for new pacts between city and nature. We believe green is much more than an aesthetic alibi, much more than a passive response to the occupation of territory. The Green Dip is an ambitious research project that will study the implementation of “green” in different climates throughout the world, showing how we can cover roofs, terraces, balconies, and facades with vegetation. What species can grow? How much soil do they need? How much water do they need and how much can they store? How much maintenance do they need and how much repair? What is the effect on the sun and wind orientation? What is the impact of height?… We want to measure how these new ecosystems derived from the implementation of “green” inside architecture benefit us. Can we evaluate/quantify ecosystem services? What do they provide us with (food, fresh water, fish, pollination…)? What can they contribute to regulate (climate regulation, disease regulation, flood regulation, store carbon, clean air, water purification…)? What cultural aspects do they enhance (aesthetic, spiritual, educational, recreational…)? What’s their direct economic value?… Finally, how will these buildings look like? How will the city look like? Let’s dip our planet in a vast jungle: The Green Dip. . . . . . #greendip #green #greenarchitecture #futurecity #ecosystem #project #education #studio

A post shared by The Why Factory by Winy Maas (@thewhyfactory_winy.maas) on Apr 3, 2019 at 7:58am PDT

 

Winy will reflect on completely new ways of thinking about cities with regard to contemporary societies and urban situations. Urban environment has become fundamentally different in many aspects. There is a need to find ways of bringing together two extremities – the individual and the collective – into possible constructions.

Learn more about the event in here.

The students of the Sky City studio developed a vr experience of the Sky City. This is a video showing the building aggregations creating a new sky urbanism.

What would your city look like if it was completely covered in green? What would the impact be on the urban environment and the life of its citizens? How much would it cost to maintain it?

Last week, the Why Factory conducted a Green Dip workshop at IAAC in Barcelona together with students from the Master in City and Technology program. They produced visions of seven cities completely dipped into green. For each of these cities, they made challenging calculations related to the cost and benefits of nature based solutions, collecting data related to each city and each plant such as energy production, soil retention, water needs, maintenance cost, CO2 absorption, oxygen production etc.

 

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What would your city look like if it was completely covered in green? What would the impact be on the urban environment and the life of its citizens? How much would it cost to maintain it? Last week, the Why Factory conducted a Green Dip workshop at IAAC in Barcelona together with students from the Master in City and Technology program. They produced visions of seven cities completely dipped into green. For each of these cities, they made challenging calculations related to the cost and benefits of nature based solutions, collecting data related to each city and each plant such as energy production, soil retention, water needs, maintenance cost, CO2 absorption, oxygen production etc. . . . . #greencity #thewhyfactory #winymaas #iaac #workshop #photoshop #greenarchitecture #future

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How to measure the benefits and costs of different plants? How much soil do they need? How much water do they need and how much can they store? How much evaporation and cooling do they provide with? How much maintenance do they need? What are the effect of sun and wind orientation? How much does planting cost? Last week, the Why Factory conducted a Green Dip workshop @iaacbcn in Barcelona together with students from the Master in City and Technology program. They produced visions of seven cities completely dipped into green. For each of these cities, they made challenging calculations related to the cost and benefits of nature based solutions, collecting data related to each city and each plant such as energy production, soil retention, water needs, maintenance cost, CO2 absorption, oxygen production etc. . . . . . #winymaas #futurecity #architecture #workshop #thewhyfactory #greencity #greendip #catalogue #archdaily #green #greendesign #visionary

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speed529 January our students will present SKY CITY.
Join the final presentation of the MSc1 studio tomorrow @ 11:15 in the Orange Room at the faculty of architecture in delft.

During the event, Winy Maas will make a plea for the introduction of the public realm into the private sphere of our cities. The booklaunch will be followed by a conversation with philosopher Marjan Slob, and architects Eric Frijters and Dirk Peters.

The book launch will take place January 28, 20.00 at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam.

Follow the link to register to the event.
https://dezwijger.nl/programma/porocity#

“We invent the future,” Javier Arpa of the Why Factory, the architectural think tank and research centre at TU Delft in the Netherlands, is telling me without irony. We are standing at the top of a towering set of tangerine-hued steps that essentially lead nowhere. The stairs, which double as student seating, ascend to the top of what’s known as the Tribune, a three-storey structure housing the Why Factory’s main offices as well as rooms for meetings and lectures. It is the first week of September and there’s a familiar tension in the air: that unmistakable mix of anxiety and anticipation that marks the beginning of a new school year.

For the full read please visit the article at Azure magazine.

 

 

Winy Maas takes you through 5 hypothesis. The Green City, The Human City, The Open City, The Historic City and The Free City.

 

 

In our new book – Copy Paste: The Badass Architectural Copy Guide – Winy Maas and Felix Madrazo discuss the issue and suggest design and practical solutions. The recent research project Transnational Architecture and Urbanism conducted at Politecnico di Milano analyses the urban effects of the mobility of designers and the transfer of projects.

In this seminar, a selected panel of architectural scholars and practitioners will critically discuss emerging issues and approaches to architectural design and urbanism in a globalized world.

PoroCity by The Why Factory:
Winy Maas and Adrien Ravon
with Tihamér Salij, Alexander Sverdlov,
Ania Molenda and Arend van Waart
Edited by Javier Arpa
Guest contributions by:
Arup, Richard Sennett and Paola Viganò
Text Editor: Rachel Julia Engler
Design: Beng!

Domus, the seminal architecture, design and art publication, was founded in 1928 by the notorious architect Gio Ponti. Last year, the publication kicked off the Domus 10x10x10 project: an unprecedented editorial format in which 10 internationally acclaimed architects will direct the magazine for 10 issues each over the upcoming 10 years. It will be a long, yet peculiar and surprising journey, which will accompany the magazine until its centennial in 2028.

As the newly appointed editor in chief, Winy Maas launches a positive vision, a dare to change and a stimulus to intellectual and collective responsibility: “We need an agenda for change. Our planet is subject to dramatic climate changes that require all of us – politicians, urban planners and citizens –  to accelerate our action to save it. But we are still too slow. Domus will act as such an agenda”, Maas announces in his manifesto of intent, published together with the special monograph dedicated to him and included in the magazine’s December issue.

Throughout 2019, Domus will be entirely dedicated to the city of the future, a city that is born out the dialogue and the contamination of all the disciplines that operate within society. The aim of this new direction is to pose multiple questions and to find multiple answers, giving voice to all those who make, think, plan and live the city. Together, the 10 issues will form a single volume, comprising over a thousand pages, which will become an instrument for evaluation and research and will help illustrate the contemporary zeitgeist.

“Can our cities surprise us? Can they be more responsible? More open? More curious? Brave and experimental? Truly green? Bio-diversified? Human, social, intimate, accessible, free, heterogeneous? Different? Can they be pleasant, beautiful, exciting? That is my plan,” Maas further states in his manifesto. “Better materials, better bathrooms, better facades, better houses, better cities and a better world, which ranges from the mass production of cars to bricks, from roads to infrastructure, including nanomaterials and large-scale planning. All of this will contribute to building the city of future, and Domus will be the one to tell about it.”

Winy Maas will be assisted by a Rotterdam-based editorial team comprising Javier Arpa Fernandez, Jan Knikker, Claudia Mainardi, and Rory Stott, who will work alongside the Domus editorial team to realize Maas’s vision. The first issue of Domus will be available at newsstands and in all the best specialized bookshops both in Italy and abroad, starting from the beginning of January 2019. Read more about the appointment on the Domus website.

Photo by © Barbra Verbij

After an intense week of work a giant model of 25 x 9 m was presented to the city, in the framework of the preparatory work for the arrival of the Manifesta Biennal to Marseille in 2020.
Winy Maas, director of The Why Factory, has been commissioned an interdisciplinary urban study of Marseille and its metropolitan region as the base for the curatorial framework of Manifesta 13.

On the occasion of the book launch of PoroCity – Opening up Solidity, Prof. Winy Maas will give a lecture about the introduction of the public realm into the private sphere of our cities.

Our current cities are comprised of enclosed, distant and introverted architecture equally isolated from urban life and ecological context. How might we open these spaces? How might we introduce pockets of space capable of triggering social encounters, multiplying circulation and facilitating the introduction of flora and fauna?

This book gathers the research conducted by The Why Factory into what we term ‘urban porosity’. Using both analogue and digital approaches, our researchers and students explored modes to open up our cities. What might be imagined to open our towers and city blocks? Stepped floors? Public stairways? Grottos in which city dwellers might meet? Could we manipulate building envelopes in order to increase façade area? Might we perforate built volumes and thus create pocket parks?

Each of our hypotheses led to a series of step-by-step interventions that materialized in the form of a vast collection of towers built by our students using LEGO blocks. When gathered together, the resulting army of LEGO towers shows how far we can—and cannot—go. How much can a tower bend before it collapses? At what point does a porous tower become financially impossible to build or maintain?

The book launch will take place 6 November, 17:45 at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Julianalaan 132-134,
2628 BLDelft (Orange tribune, Oosterre). A sneak preview of the book can be seen here.

PoroCity by The Why Factory:
Winy Maas and Adrien Ravon
with Tihamér Salij, Alexander Sverdlov,
Ania Molenda and Arend van Waart
Edited by Javier Arpa
Guest contributions by:
Arup, Richard Sennett and Paola Viganò
Text Editor: Rachel Julia Engler
Design: Beng!

 

English, Paperback, 15 x 21 cm
300 pages pages
ISBN: 978-94-6208-459-9
English

Manifesta successfully introduced architecture and urban studies to the curatorial process of Manifesta 12 in Palermo as visual instruments to understand and unlock the city and to leave a tangible legacy. Manifesta 13 Marseille will consist of an interdisciplinary program of artistic events broadly focused on the areas of art, urban development, contemporary culture, education, theory, research, and mediation. Manifesta 13 Marseille will take place between 7 June and 1 November 2020.

In Marseille, MVRDV and The Why Factory will work closely with students from TU Delft and other universities in Marseille. The pre-biennial research will be an investigation tool for the next Creative Mediators team and an instrument for the citizens of Marseille to co-create and synergise with the biennial at an early stage.

Winy Maas, co-founder MVRDV and Director of The Why Factory:
‘As an urban planner I imagine to highlight, enlarge and manifest the potentials, necessities and beauties of Marseille. The urban study will support all artists, makers and designers involved, to show, inspire and enlarge its role and specificity within the archipelago of European cities. Thus, enlarging Europe’ s cohabitation and strength.’

Hedwig Fijen, Manifesta Director:
‘With the appointment of Dutch office MVRDV as partners in the research process for M13 in Marseille, we hope to get a better understanding of how to implement the biennial in a more inclusive way into the tissues of the host city, considering ways of working such as co-creation, co-production and collaboration with local universities and associations. We believe that by commissioning an architectural office to develop an urban research project anticipating the biennial, Manifesta reaches beyond specific art communities to facilitate a new social commons, and allows commissioned artists, thinkers and curators to operate both within a framework and with freedom of experiment.’

“Winy will discuss the value of the iconic and the copy-paste generation, as well as urban planning methods and software that enable our cities to develop towards a better future.”

MUF brings together representatives of city administrations of Russia and the world, architects, urban planners, developers, heads of financial companies, investors, technological startups, media representatives and average citizens.

Winy Maas will take part of three sessions:

–  Egocentric City vs Ascetic City. Scenarios and Alternatives of Spatial Development

– New Culture in the Old Shell. How to Revitalize Public Spaces that Are Losing Popularity?

– Window to Europe. Did Moscow Manage to Find a Common Ground with Foreign Architects?

 

For more info: http://mosurbanforum.com/speakers/1419 

WHY

As the planet moves into the Anthropocene era, a shift of focus moves from the world of architecture instead to an architecture of the world. Architecture has the potential to explore beyond its traditional disciplinary borders, the possibilities, repercussions and limits of organising the world in a different way. And finding ways to make litterally better worlds. Spatially as well as politically, taking into account how technology disruptions can change assumptions about the future of the world. Rather than a top down approach, Planet Maker seeks to become a tool of exploration and simulation where ‘what if’s’ are tested to give guidance and inspiration for future planet makers. Iteration, variation and levels of intensity address the need to keep many options open for discussion.

 

WHAT

The future of planet Earth is explored through multiple ‘what if’s’ organized through six key lenses: Economy, Food, Energy, Mobility, Green & Society. These lenses take as their starting point an icosahedron and then a polyhedron of 320 triangles. Each triangle has three main attributes that are shared by all lenses: 1. land use, 2. population, 3. temperature. The future of the planet is simulated through scenarios that concentrate on exploring the coming 100 years.

 

HOW

Each lens explores scenario making what if’s and their variants in time through a simulation game that uses scripting tools to manage massive quantities of data and parameters. For every lens the teams have developed a specific method to tackle correlations between the most pressing subjects, yet all lenses are tested through a common database and a common output of land use. Starting by giving an overview of the most challenging futures the lenses then go on to explore the ‘what if’s’ simulating the effects of precise policies on the overall triangulation of the world. These mini software’s inform and guide the creation of 48heat-map globes that test  ‘what if’s’ of the emerging Anthropocene. To visualize the effect of these ‘what if’ scenarios have on a particular location, a series of before and after postcards give the viewer a sense of the experiential impact of the scenario outcomes.

“Can we make planets that are truly green?” asks Winy Maas, the director of The Why Factory. “Can we make a planet that can cool instead of heat up? That can be open and free? That reduce poverty?”

 

CREDITS

FACULTY

TUDelft

Studio instructors: Winy Maas, Felix Madrazo, Stavros Gargaretas, Lex te Loo.

Future Models seminar instructors: Pirouz Nourian, Hans Hoogenboom.

Research and Education Coordinator: Javier Arpa

 

RMIT

Studio instructors: Vivian Mitsogianni, Ben Milbourne, Sean Guy

 

UTS

Studio instructors: Louisa King, Egbert Stolk

 

STUDENTS

TUDelft

Green: Joon Hyung Park (TUDelft), Magdalena Klimczak (TUDelft), Agnieszka Panasiuk (TUDelft), Ethan Allsop (RMIT), Vi Nguyen (RMIT)

Food: Hassan Ahmed (TUDelft), Stan van Stralen (TUDelft), Nils Treffers (TUDelft), Silvia Leone (TUDelft), Lok Tin Shing (RMIT), Xun Luo (RMIT), Qiannan Ye (RMIT)

Society: Lars Barneveld (TUDelft), Craig Trompetter (TUDelft), Anastasia Voutsa (TUDelft), Eveline Van de Bovekamp (TUDelft), Eilidh Ross (RMIT), Alexis Infeld (RMIT), Floyd Billows (RMIT)

Economy: Matt Bevan (TUDelft), Hellmer Rahms (TUDelft), Geoff Eberle (TUDelft), Alexander de Caires (TUDelft), Anna Lee (RMIT) Andrea Milovanovic (RMIT)

Energy: Heeyoun Kim (TUDelft), Hidde Manders (TUDelft), Pol Vermeulen (TUDelft), Alexandros Kypriotakis-Weijers (TUDelft), Damian Camilleri (RMIT)mobility, Nikolce Nikolovski (RMIT)

Mobility: Stewart Monti (UTS), David Cordato (UTS), Wayomika Nongrum (UTS), Nikolas Vidakovic (UTS), Gabrielle Veringa (UTS), Karina Alzate (UTS), Ali Makari (UTS)

 

July 3 – 15:00 | Final Review | Orange Tribune

July 3 – 5 | Exhibition |Orange Tribune

In collaboration with ITMO university and 25 students from all around Russia, prior to the exhibition a 4-day workshop led by The Why Factory took place, during which we developed proposals for the future of Saint Petersburg. The result of this workshop is now presented at the exhibition.

 

The workshop will focus on Autonomous Innovative Communities, selecting a district in Madrid as a case-study for a research project that will be developed throughout the week.

Can each community locally produce all of the energy, food, and clean water needed for basic living—requiring no centralised infrastructure? Can humans transition from ownership to sharing, while living and working in compact, agile, supportive environments? This workshop explores the premise that emerging urban innovations can dramatically reduce resources consumed by cities while simultaneously creating more livable, entrepreneurial communities.

‘We are living in an era of extreme urbanisation and rapid global warming’, states workshop mentor Kent Larson. ‘The challenges of both call for more than mere incremental adjustments.’

After reviewing applications submitted by hundreds of candidates from around the world, the selection committee awarded ten scholarships to students from the following universities and institutions: American University of Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, United States; London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile; Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark; Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft, the Netherlands; Tongji University, Shanghai, China; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona, Spain and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

These ten students will engage with a group of specialists through a series of seminars and lectures culminating in a five day workshop led by the Atelier mentor, Kent Larson, Director of MIT Media Lab City Science Group and Initiative, and his team.

The Academic Body spans a wide range of practitioners working in different fields interrelated with the City, including: Beatriz Colomina, Director of Graduate Studies, School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton, United States; Luis Cueto, General Coordinator for the Mayor in Madrid, Madrid City Hall, Madrid, Spain; Anupama Kundoo, Principal, Anupama Kundoo Architects, Madrid, Spain/Auroville, India; Winy Maas, Co-Founder and Director of MVRDV and Director of the Why Factory, Delft, the Netherlands; Tim Stonor, Managing Director of Space Syntax, London, United Kingdom; Leonor Tarrasón, Director of Environmental Solutions, Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Oslo, Norway; Belinda Tato and José Luis Vallejo, Founders and Directors of Ecosistema Urbano, Madrid, Spain/Miami, United States.

The On Cities Workshop will include seminars, lectures, one-to-one tutoring and urban architectural tours to learn more about the context of Madrid and it’s districts. During the course of the workshops, participants will have the opportunity to engage with the Norman Foster Foundation’s archive and research projects.

Nicholas Negroponte, Co-Founder and former Director of MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, United States will act as the Chief Advisor of the workshop tutoring the students through the research process.

As a way to disseminate knowledge and ideas, the public lectures will be recorded and documented for publication in series of annual books published by the Norman Foster Foundation.

On Porocity:

Welcome to a porous society!

Welcome to cities that want to be open and porous! Our current cities consist of towers and blocks that are enclosed, distant, introverted and not mixed with urban life, social possibilities or ecological potentials. They are not open. How to open them? How can we introduce pockets for encounters, for streams of circulation and communication, for zones for greenery and animals, for tunnels of cooling and refreshment, for channels and pockets of water and sanitation…

What logics can be imagined in our towers to allow for this openness?
By using stepped floors making stairs all through the towers…
By creating grottos that group and collect people…
By splitting towers that multiply the surface of the façade…
By twisting blocks that thus create pocket parks…
And so on…

Every hypothesis leads to a series of interventions. Step by step. How far can we go before the tower collapses, before it is unaffordable? Together, these series form an army of towers that contributes to a more porous, a more open city. Why wait?

Winy Maas

Winy Maas Prof. Ir. Ing. FRIBA HAIA is one of the co-founding directors of the globally operating architecture and urban planning firm MVRDV, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, known for projects such as the Expo 2000 and the vision for greater Paris, Grand Paris Plus Petit.

He is also professor at and director of The Why Factory, a research institute for the future city, he founded in 2008 at TU Delft. He is currently IAAC Master in City & Technology Senior Faculty. Since 2013 he is Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, before that he was among others Professor at ETH Zurich, Berlage Institute, MIT, Ohio State and Yale University. In addition he designs stage sets, objects and was curator of Indesem 2007. He curates exhibitions, lectures throughout the world and takes part in international juries.

http://www.arquitecturaydiseno.es/arquitectura/winy-maas-reflexiona-sobre-el-futuro-en-barcelona_1699 

 

 

He is also professor at and director of The Why Factory, a research institute for the future city, he founded in 2008 at TU Delft. He is currently IAAC Master in City & Technology Senior Faculty. Since 2013 he is Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, before that he was among others Professor at ETH Zurich, Berlage Institute, MIT, Ohio State and Yale University. In addition he designs stage sets, objects and was curator of Indesem 2007. He curates exhibitions, lectures throughout the world and takes part in international juries.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but registration is mandatory in order to assist to the event.

https://www.eventbrite.es/e/iaac-lecture-series-2018-winy-maas-mvrdv-tickets-46396981621

The allotment of seats will be based on the arrival of the registered attendees, until the full capacity of the venue is reached. We reserve the right to re-assign available seats if any registered attendee do not arrive before the beginning of the event.

Globally renowned Architect and IAAC Master in City & Technology Senior Faculty Winy Maas discussed with IAAC Academic Director Areti Markopoulou the importance of the new profession of urban technologist.

 

 

We want to thank Nour Z.H. Abuzaid, Nour Z.H. Abuzaid and Nour Z.H. Abuzaid for presenting the OnTheGo Studio. Furthermore Prof. Dr. Ir. Ronald Wall who held a conversation With Felix Madrazo on the thinking behind Region Maker , Ulf Haufhauf who presented earlier The Why Factory works on Green and Food and Onur Can Tepe who talked about Anarchcity.

We are very excited to start a new design studio this semester, and would like to invite you all to join the studio presentation next Tuesday, April 24 at 11am. You will have the chance to get to know the contents of the studio, as well as of meeting with tutors, researchers and students of the Why Factory, who will present the design and research already undertaken by the Why Factory.

The event will let us get to meet you and will let you to familiarize with our approach and methodology to the fabrication of the Future. See you all next week.

 

The Why Factory Team

Research and concept design: The Why Factory

Definitive design and construction drawings: MVRDV

Images: Zhang Chao

 

Join us for the Lecture at TU Delft – BK, 12:45, Oostserre.

OnTheGo asked the students to design a housing block capable of accommodating the different needs of each of its temporary residents and maximize the space to arrive to new levels of both compression and expansion. We want to achieve this without sacrificing the specific requirements of its users, OnTheGo is a tailor made house on the move!

Check out the movie below.

Our current cities consist of towers and blocks that are somehow enclosed, distant, introvert and not mixed with urban life, social possibilities and ecological potentials. They are not open. How to open them?

Together with MVRDV, we also presented “The Next Hutong” and “The Vertical Village”, on the future the urban villages of Asia, particularly in China.

Images: Zhang Chao

Following the investigation initiated at The Why Factory on future formats of fulfilling our living desires (“EGO”), the The Wego House proposes on-time adaptable formats of accommodation subject to the users’ needs.
Research and concept design: The Why Factory
Definitive design and construction drawings: MVRDV

Images: Zhang Chao

In the workshop WeShare Berlin thirty students of The Why Factory collected and compared various ways in which habitable space in the city is being shared. How collaborative are current housing developments? And how do they compare to developments of the last century? Can the future become increasingly co-operative? Where does sharing create conflict and where does opportunity arise?

The analysis of 6 typical Berlin housing typologies from different periods of the 20th and 21st century led to six unique, alternative strategies for a shared future. What if we share by Visibility, through personal Expression, by giving Access, and accepting Ambiguity, by preserving Anonymity and cooperating in Construction?

Workshop instructors: Stavros Margaritas and Leo Stuckardt

Students: Amanda Verschuur, Ana de Fonseca, Angela Sheperd Diaz, August Persson, Berend Schenk, Bill Hu, Danica Mijonic, Eileen Stornebrink , Emily Aquilina, Emma van der Staaij, Helena Daher, Jimmy Lei, Jitske Swagemakers, Joseph Tjong-Ayong, Justin Frank, Karim Daw, Karina Andre, Maria Kaik, Mesut Ulku, Nour Abuzaid, Philipp Wenzl, Shervin Azadi, Shirin Hadi, Thomas Krall, Twan Goossens, Yuan Guo, Xiaomi Zhi, Zach Mellas

OnTheGo will challenge students to reflect on the problematic of maximum desires and pressing needs.  What sort of organizing principle is needed in order to accomplish a 100% adaptability in real time to ever changing demands of temporary users? How can time be taken into account to use the maximum potential of space resources? Can we think of game software that is able to accommodate different temporary modes of accommodation?

OnTheGo is currently further developed by the Msc1 students in Delft.

The Green Dip seeks to reconsider the spatial, biological, and metaphorical construct of “Nature” in our cities.
Can ecological principles be an active substrate for the construction of a fertile and dense urban fabric? Can the city be understood as a living machine? Can we design our new housing blocks, office towers, streets or city infrastructure based on novel ecosystems? Can Nature be understood as a provider of ecosystem services? What are the spatial and cultural landscapes resulting from introducing Nature in the compact city? If the infrastructures have traditionally been the generating lines of urban development, is it not time to make the ecological, agricultural or forestry production a new ferment?

The Green Dip seeks to experiment with the fabrication of the city of the future though state of the art green planning, food production, ecology, health and biodiversity. This in turn should construct a new relationship with the rural landscape. If the future of humanity relies on the collective benefits of urban density, it is essential to reduce both land consumption and the energy needed to construct and operate the horizontally dispersed city. Can thus greenery, landscape or production traditionally restricted to the ground level continue up and into the building? What facades, what roofs, what floors, what surfaces, what construction details allow green to take over our cities? Students will be asked to design buildings that include traditional urban uses, yet producing food and energy, cleaning their own water, recycling their own waste and holding a great degree of biodiversity.

A symbiotic world of people, plants and animals. Can this symbiosis between city and countryside in one spatial envelope offer essential argumentation to the global concerns regarding of urbanization and consumption?

Related courses
MSc2 Seminar Future Models I (AR0078)

The Why Factory is dedicated to creating future cities; the Ball Fiction Studio will scale up this vision. Starting from a precise “What if…?” question to draw a hypothetical scenario, and continuing with global data projections and research, each student will develop one of those scenarios that will change the world  (dramatically) in the next 100 years. This change will be explored on all scales; from global to territorial, to architectural typology, down to innovation on a building technology scale: what are the details that change the world? This studio will challenge students to interrogate the fundamental shapers of their scenario on a 1:50, 1:20, 1:10, 1:1… scale. Ball Fiction will guide students through this process of formulating and visualizing their future fantasies: learning to dream big, to prepare them with the skills and tools to imagine – then effect – change. How does our life change? How do we commute and how do we consume? What is the urgency and how can we communicate this to global leaders?

At the end of the studio, each student will be asked to produce, among other material, a physical model -their World (i.e. their Ball)- depicting their future fantasies, as well as an animated movie exploring the implementation of their scenarios and their impacts on -literally- the horizon.
The resulting collection of fictional balls will be part of an installation to be setup in Delft and other venues to be announced.

Related courses
MSc2 Seminar Future Models I (AR0078)

Luca Molinari, scientific curator of the gallery, introduces the exhibition, whose opening  included the participation of Winy Maas, architect and co-founder of the MVRDV studio and head of the t?f research programme:
“SpazioFMG per l’Architettura and The Why Factory were born almost at the same time, in 2007 and 2008. In the last decade, both have promoted a reflection on contemporary architecture that goes way beyond the vision and the story of a single building, of an architectural creation and of a design in the traditional sense.
SpazioFMG and the MVRDV and TU Delft workshop, although with clearly different functions and vocations, have been and continue to be valuable spaces for research and free thought, continually involved in rethinking and broadening the boundaries of a discipline that has to update itself continually, in order to provide an effective response to the challenges of our time”.

The work of The Why Factory is presented at SpazioFMG with the support of digital and analogue materials: the gallery will be dominated by 9 podiums, made of MaxFine Ciytstone Grey slabs by FMG, which will display the 9 books from the Future Cities series; besides them 9 digital frames will show the visitor graphics, designs and images related to the development of the research.

The exhibition also features a large printed map showing how the results obtained by t?f, are shared and communicated to the general public through exhibitions, publications and workshops, in order to stimulate public debate on architecture and urban planning.

www.spaziofmg.com

In 10 years, 20.000 new residents will move to Eindhoven. This means 10.000 new housing units of 100m2 each resulting in 1.000.000m2. Should we build 45 towers of 75 meters high? 20 towers of 150 metres? Or can we imagine other visions for the future city of Eindhoven? The visions produced at Ici Eindhoven will stimulate debates on the possibilities and opportunities for urban densification in the city. What is the future of Eindhoven? How do we want to live in it?

The future city is flexible. Have you ever dreamed of sleeping suspended high in the air? How would it feel to sleep inside a vertical hanging garden? What if your room was made of stairs? Would you dare to sleep in a room that was a billboard? Or inside a shimmering grotto? What is your dream room

In this installation, nine rooms are made to fulfil these idealistic but egoistic perspectives in a limited space. When confronted with the dreams of others, users must learn to negotiate with eachother. How to defend your ideals? Users start to work with and around eachother and, somehow, together create something that is even nicer. And with the surrounding intrusions and negotiations, one begins to feel that something interesting is happening ‘next door.’ Why not visit your neighbour? Thus, Ego becomes Wego.

The (W)ego installation represents a frozen moment in the living and flexible (W)ego vision. In (W)ego a research platform from The Why Factory, future urban dwellings are capable of adapting in real time to the users’ needs. This vision is detailed in a film that plays in one of the rooms of (W)ego. (W)ego shows that evolutionary and flexible architecture is possible. That the most perfect situation can be achieved at every moment, leading to an even more optimal use of our limited urban space.

The future city is wide. It needs many approaches and many products. Over the last 10 years, students at The Why Factory have produced hundreds of ideas for the future city and its products.

“The audio-visual installation in the Hall 1of the Klokgebouw focuses on the products that will change our world, says Winy Maas.” “These products have been developed by our students and researchers in the last 10 years and are the result of a true combination of science and fiction. They are meant to provoke amazement and make us wonder. They are truly visionary: what begins as a fantasy in the imagination of the student could be a reality one day.”

The installation shows products, observations, hypotheses, and statements generated by The Why Factory over and it examines the relationship between products and the future city. How will these products change the world? What will it be like to live in an absolutely wonderful, infinite, fast, green, fun, biodiverse, compact, porous, (w)egoistic, and the flexible world? What urban forms might appear? What products, what architecture, what landscape, what urban design could support our visions for the future? What ecosystems, transport networks, and infrastructure would emerge?

The products shown here offer a wide range of answers to those questions: the need for new leadership in architecture and urbanism in Visionary Cities; the wish for common sense in a world that seem to be dominated by individualism in Wegocity; the advocacy for wildlife in Biodivercity; the case for openness in architecture in Porocity; the desire for amazement in our daily lives in World Wonders; the need to accelerate the world’s green agenda in Green Dream; the push for the introduction of the small scale in urban densification actions in The Vertical Village; the excitement and amazement of new material changes in Barba…

The possibilities are boundless.

Location: Hall 1, Klokgebouw

 

Photos: Ossip van Duivenbode

Copy Paste is an invitation to copy with finesse and skill. Copy Paste understands the past as a vast archive on which we can and must build. Copy Paste is a reader in the art of evolution. Copy Paste is a bad ass copy guide. Instead of mocking the culture of copycats, design could learn better how to make good fakes: fakes good enough to beat their references. Copy Paste explores the tactical evolution of architecture. It brings together discussions on ethical and legal constraints, genealogy, reference, geometry and psychology with art historical evidence that copying might be older –more original even- than originality.

Instead of mocking the culture of copycats, design could learn better how to make good fakes: fakes good enough to beat their references.

Copy Paste explores the tactical evolution of architecture. It brings together discussions on ethical and legal constraints, genealogy, reference, geometry and psychology with art historical evidence that copying might be older –more original even- than originality.

COPY PASTE

The Badass Architectural Copy Guide

Authors: Winy Maas and Felix Madrazo with Adrien Ravon and Diana Ibáñez López

Guest contributions from:

Aaron Betsky, Petra Brouwer, Filip Dujardin, Bernard Hulsman, Matteo Kuijpers and Jeroen Zuidgeest

ISBN 978-94-6208-164-2

1^st edition: October 2017

Design: Beng!

English, Paperback, 15 x 21 cm, 424 pages, illustrated (350 full color)

The first weekend of the Ici Eindhoven masterclass, an event/exhibition set up in conjunction with Dutch Design Week, opened on Friday October, 13th.

In the first masterclass (13-15 October), attendees will build a foam model of central Eindhoven that will serve as the base for further studies on the city’s future urban form. On 21-22 October, coinciding with the opening Dutch Design Week, attendees will model future visions for the city that can be inserted into the larger urban model. The resulting pieces will be on display at the exhibition space, showcasing the diversity of typologies for future life – visions made by and for the city. The visions produced at Ici Eindhoven will stimulate debates on the possibilities and opportunities for urban densification in the city. What is the future of Eindhoven? How do we want to live in it?

Ici Eindhoven is a platform open to and made for the public to contribute to future visions for the city of Eindhoven.  Visitors to Dutch Design Week are invited to join in with students during this masterclass and are welcome to produce models and participate in conversations.

Dutch Design Week runs from 21-29 October in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Tickets for the event are available on their website here.

Ici Eindhoven

Dates:13-15 October and 21-22 October

Location: Stadhuisplein, Stadhuisplein, 5611EM Eindhoven

image credit: Paris Habitat exhibition at the Pavillon de l´Arsenal, curated by Javier Arpa

These products have been developed by students and researchers in the last 10 years, and are the result of a true combination of science and fiction. They are meant to provoke amazement and make us wonder. They are truly visionary: what begins as a fantasy in the imagination of the student could be a reality one day.

At the Why Factory, we believe that it is necessary to doubt, dream and imagine more. What products can make our cities wonderful, porous, adaptable, transparent, fast, biodiverse or fun? We accompany students through the process of framing and producing their fantasies, teaching them to dream and prepare them with the abilities and tools to imagine big and trigger radical change.

Our visions are made of scientific knowledge, objective data, good moments of fantasy and lots of optimism. They bring hope to the world of design and invite all actors involved in the construction of the city to think big again, pursuing collective aspirations instead of cultivating individual dreams.

Let’s bring the “all power to the imagination!” spirit back to design culture.

More information>

http://www.ddw.nl/en/event/1596

 

 

 

Students developed “The BlockMaker”, which could calculate certain impacts of transformations. The results are shown in the movie.

We will host a series of presentations related to the topic of this semester’s design studio at The Why Factory. Instructors, researchers and former students of the Why Factory will show their work.

Our cities are in crisis and their futures depend on architects and urbanists who are willing to look beyond today’s realities to chart the direction for our increasingly urban world. From individual dreams and compromised idols, to the leisure bubble and fragmentation. From crippling bureaucracy and risk assessment psychosis to economic crisis, ecoabsurdity, fashionable poverty, repetition, preservation mania and antiseptic visions of the future, contemporary city design is full of obstacles standing in the way of visionary thinking.

Read our full manifesto:

Visionary Cities

 

TU Delft, RMIT & Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Delft, 8-31 May, 2017

Professor: Winy Maas
Coordinator: Javier Arpa
Instructors The Why Factory: Felix Madrazo, Adrien Ravon
Instructors RMIT: Vivian Mitsogianni, Ben Milbourne
Instructors Bezalel Academy: Ifat Finkelman, Deborah Pinto Fdeda

Students: Bradley Mitchell, Bryan Chung, Dookee Chung, Hadassah Lehman Cohen, Jarrod Palmier, Jian Yang, Katherine Kai-Cin Jou, Laura Szymon, Liran Messer, Manor Brown, Michael Ifergan, Mordechai Bachar, Nadav Etkin, Neal Kaldor, Omry Spasser, Philip Chang, Rotem Gilboa, Shelly Shmulewich Shalev, Stav Dror, Tamar Over, Temitope Adesina, Tom Asiskovich, Tomer Deren Peretz, William Christian, Yuval Bar-Adon

The Wego Workshop is a follow-up of on the Wegocity project. If until now we had explored the construction of the permanent dwelling that fulfilled one’s ultimate dreams, at The Why Factory we want to start exploring modes of temporary living for populations on the move. As humans leave their homes in search of work, land, education, safety, opportunity or leisure the design of our cities needs to facilitate this movement.

 

OnTheGo asks the students to design a housing block capable of accommodating the different needs of each of its temporary residents and maximize the space to arrive at new levels of both compression and expansion. But we want to achieve this without sacrificing the specific requirements of its users, OnTheGo is a tailor made house on the move.

We want to test the capacity of architecture to evolve over time, in real time, as newcomers arrive and old comers depart, as users coincide for a few minutes in rush hours or to explore the potential of time gaps for expansion and compression. The project is interested in finding intelligent and innovative solutions for ever changing environments and maximum customization and adaptation within a highly constrained envelope. The constructive solutions for facilitating real time spatial transformations will be part of the core of the proposal.

OnTheGo will challenge students to reflect on the problematic of maximum desires and pressing needs. What sort of organizing principle is needed to accomplish a 100%adaptability in real time to ever changing demands of temporary users? How can time be taken into account to use the maximum potential of space resources? Can we think of game software that can accommodate different temporary modes of accommodation?

After our projects Egocity and Wegocity, The Why Factory wants to keep investigating the potentials of desire-based design processes, capable of introducing the residents’ wishes in the construction and adaptation of housing and the city. If Egocity and Wegocity focused on the construction of the permanent dwelling that fulfilled one’s ultimate dreams, OnTheGo will explore modes of temporary living capable of adapting–in real time- to a vast array of
comers and goers.
OnTheGo is organized jointly with the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Students from IIT Chicago will spend their Fall semester in Delft.

Image: Niels Baljit, Shared Block

On July 20th 2017, Javier Arpa, Research and Education Coordinator of The Why Factory, presented the work of the think tank at the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival.  Javier Arpa conducted an audience of over 2000 people on a survey of The Why Factory’s concerns and production in the last 10 years.

More information:

http://klaf2017.com/datumkl/javier-arpa/

 

The show is a journey through the research projects we have undertaken in the last ten years. It reveals the scope, transcendence and topicality of our visions about a better future for our planet.

 

Photos by Saskia Wehler

Next September 14, Winy Maas will participate in the Helsinki Design Week. Professor Maas will deliver a lecture and participate in an event together with SWINE, Marko Ahtisaari and LOLA.

From the organiser’s website:

A new event puts international design stars at the same tables as the audience. Speakers include Winy Maas, SWINE, Marko Ahtisaari and LOLA. The event is part of the WDW Summit from 14 to 15 September 2017 in Helsinki.

A new design event called Design Commons will be launched in Helsinki. Design Commons is an evening conference and travelling platform where activists, makers and shapers gather to share their experiences, knowledge and ideas.

It is targeted at creative professionals and their stakeholder groups. A relaxed concept will break the traditional conference lecture format that has speakers on stage and the audience silently listening. The international stars will sit with the audience at round tables and take turns to talk about the hottest design topics to the entire room.  Afterwards each table will casually discuss the topics and related solutions while enjoying food and wine.

Experimental and spontaneous, Design Commons is to provide new ideas and connections to opinion leaders and possible future collaboration partners. A round table will create a relaxed, informal atmosphere allowing international ideas and cooperation to flourish.

The concept is created by the largest design festival in the Nordic countries, Helsinki Design Week, and the largest design event in Africa, Design Indaba

 

More information:

http://www.helsinkidesignweek.com/weekly/ground-breaking-design-conference-to-be-launched-at-helsinki-design-week/?lang=en

For 10 years, The Why Factory has worked on the agenda of the future of our cities. It produces observations, hypotheses and statements in a visual and direct manner. It has led to a wide range of claims: the need for new leadership in urbanism and architecture in Visionary Cities; the wish for common sense in a world that seems to be dominated by individualism in (W)ego City; the advocacy for wildlife in Biodivercity; the claim for openness in Porocity; the desire for amazement in We Want World Wonders; the hope and need for acceleration of the green agenda in Green Dream; the push for the combination of small scale in densification actions in The Vertical Village; the exploration radical trend breaks and their effects in City Shock; the excitement and amazement of the new material changes in Barba; the expression of fear of the ultimately killing Absolute Leisure; and soon Copy Paste, a pamphlet for referencing and development…

The work of The Why Factory is a somehow strange phenomenon in scientific research -design research-, which is commonly regarded as an “un-scientific” method. We use design research as a tool for innovation. It is a process of trial and error, where the goal is sometimes unclear and the end is open, but which leads to an exciting journey with a potentially spectacular outcome. Maybe it can be regarded as a true combination of science and fiction.

All this work could have not been realized without the incredible input of our students and researchers. Students participate in a collective research, learn though this process and use their innocence to criticize topics. Meanwhile, researchers collaborate with students and motivate them to go beyond the fetishism of the individual product, so as to make the work comparable and productive, and to edit it to the level of the pamphlets we produce.

Through these 10 years, I have realised that the issue of the future has become more necessary as well as sexier. More and more films talk and speculate about it. More and more designers invent elements that serve the future. More and more leaders talk about the future. More and more architects dream about the future than ever.

We did not trigger the debate, but we have definitely contributed to it.

Are we ready? By far not! The future demands lots of knowledge to inform and inspire others.

There is so much to do. Especially in days of scepticism, populism and fear. We need so much input to make our future good. More funding is needed to do research and to produce visualisations on future mobility, future democracies, future economies, future healthiness, etc. And more funding is needed to share this work with the world and make it accessible to all.

Think with us on the future! If curiosity make us unique, let us enlarge our curiosity! Let us share with us the What’s Nexts!

Watch Winy Maas’ lecture at the Indaba Festival in Cape Town, where he presented some of the research undertaken by The Why Factory.

 

From Design Indaba Website:

If you are reading this while sitting in one of the world’s big cities chances are that you’re in a tall grey-looking building overlooking several more of them.

For Rotterdam-based architect Winy Maas, unlocking these kinds of built-up areas and creating new spaces in our overcrowded cities is one of his curiosities. Instead of rows and rows of skyscrapers, Maas says he is interested in unlocking those spaces and making them greener and more communal.

 

One example he showed is of a building in Rotterdam that was transformed just by adding a flight of stairs that lead from the ground floor all the way to the rooftop. That way many visitors can come to a site that was not always accessible to them. Instead the building becomes a place to hang out on the roof, take pictures or have fashion shows along the stairs and simply a way of attracting visitors to the city. Maas says a simple solution like this can work to unlock many other similar buildings in cities around the world.

Maas, of MVRDV, says he is not that interested in the current move towards open-source design, preferring instead to look at how to improve on what is already there: “I don’t care about open source. I don’t care for it. We have to use things from the past, bring it further [into the future] and develop it.”

He says that is what he, along with his PHD and master’s students, spend their time thinking about. “We have built up everything. There is too many of us here. What is the alternative?” he asks.

A clever solution they came up with is to create the illusion of space in a high street by making bricks out of glass. For Crystal House, instead of bricks, the bottom half of the building is made out of glass bricks, making the high street look like something made of ice.

He says that as a result: “everyone wants to touch the building. That is what I am most proud of. I finally made a building like the Taj Mahal that everyone wants to touch.”

 

More information:

http://www.designindaba.com/videos/interviews/winy-maas-innovating-future-architecture

Winy Maas on innovating into the future of architecture from Design Indaba

In the occasion of the opening of The Why Factory exhibition at the Architekturgalerie Munich, Winy Maas gave the lecture “What´s next” to an audience of architecture students of the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Munich (Germany).

Winy Maas invited students to envision a better future. A future that will be visionary, diverse, resilient, robotic, technological, natural, biodiverse, self-sufficient, green, non-stop, adaptable, intense, dense, visionary, fantastic, fast, fun, surprising, beautiful, accessible, porous, open, free, intimate, relaxing, cute, common…

 

Images: Nicola Borgmann