DnA+ | Fokke Moerel (MVRDV): bet kokios struktūros pastato negriovimas jau yra tvaru

Thank you for having me. Indeed, so I told this morning at the lecture, thank you very much for inviting me again because now I understand where I'm at and not just on the screen, so that's so much nicer of course to understand who you're talking to and where you are.

Actually it is, yeah, and so also of course then in Philippines, so it's very nice already to be able to walk around a little bit and of course here in a historic city. Yeah, a bit of a feel.

Hopefully the first impression is always the first so you cannot change that. And indeed yesterday we had some time to walk around and today we actually moved around to let's say some parts, and very superficial. It's nice to see this sort of grandeur on the one hand, like really large buildings with a good history, and on the other side the more intimate streets maybe of the historic district. So it's and well you can really see that there's a history indeed of many different layers, and that's well I think that's a good thing with a city like this. So it's you know, we had an opportunity to see a few of those objects, let's say the theater and the sports palace on the other side which is vacant, but also indeed the university, etc. So many, and a beautiful white tower, I don't know what it's called, sorry, in the historic center.

No, actually we don't. So yes, I also regret that part, so I hope that's going to change very soon because it's a very interesting region I think, and there's a lot of opportunities I see. So we hope indeed to get acquainted with the region much more. That's why I'm here, and we travel here before. Well, not just me but other people from our office, and we have just recently, end of last year, we entered one of the competitions for the CBD area for an office building, and that was I think a quite nice entry. We didn't win unfortunately, but that was in Vilnius. That was here. Yeah, and so we're exploring.

Wow, that's a very broad question. But yeah, well, maybe to come back to a discussion we actually just had coming to this place here is there's very often there can be a high quality architecture, but then their model should be, and I think that should be the case also annoying is that there's a bit lack of holistic view on the city. And so we did the urban planning or the strategic planning I think is something that for us in the Netherlands is a very common thing to look at cities as a whole. And it really creates or it urges a city also to really think of what the future would be and how to plan it in a broader sense, not just residences here, offices there, and then a bit of leisure there, but to really see how people move around, what you do with your green, what you do with the Riverside for instance, what you do with your historical legacy. So these kind of layers are very important to try and connect. And so if that works in the city, then you feel more at ease, I think more at home.

Well, it's never one person of course, so it's always a collaboration first of all with the client and the other stakeholders. If they're there, they're always stakeholders — if they're just your neighbors or maybe people who also invest. But so there we were in front of a question from urbanistically like how do you deal with an expansion of a city into a region which is not a residential area? And so it was our financial district, it's not a very big one but it's a very typical environment where after six nothing happens anymore. So to have to build or come up with a residential project that was the biggest challenge there. We created indeed all the programs that need to be there, like the commercial part of course, the parking garage underneath, and a mixed use of offices and commercial as I said, but also the apartments. But then in a, it's organized horizontally yes, but at the same time we try to connect to the location because we know it's going to expand. So trying to make a little city within a city, or a little neighborhood actually within a building, that was a question there. And many questions of course afterwards like how do you create individual homes and not looking at your neighbor too closely? And that's why we indeed started to carve these very simple towers as it started into this Valley as we have it now. And how you can still connect the upper terraces with the street life and also have more street life just by adding furniture or terraces also on the ground level. So trying to make this puzzle in a vertical sense.

Well, I hope that they feel connected, they feel at home, and that doesn't need — although it's a bit outside of the city center — that they feel that there's enough to connect to. And of course if you walk out the door there, it's not the historic city of Amsterdam, so that is very different, but there's much more to do. There's sports, there's the green, so it's comfortable. There's a lot of activity and all your amenities that you need. So I hope it gives more than just an average apartment building, both for the people living there and probably to the city.

Yeah, well, it's actually one of the first. There's some topics within the office that already started way when the office started to exist, which this year is actually 30 years ago. So 30 years ago, the founding partners all grouped to enter the European in Berlin for an industry site close to a railway station, close to a busy and dense inner city location. And they designed a residential tower — that was the brief. And you can see there that it's never been built, but they won, and so there was the reason to start up the firm. Like okay, it works, let's do more, our collaboration. But that was a residential tower, but really trying to identify how you can still live in a high dense area in a vertical way and yet feel that it's your place. And this feeling of belonging and that you can actually point at what your apartment is — it was a puzzle in section to see how apartments could actually fill in: one apartment would be three levels high but very narrow, and the other one would be the opposite, more horizontal, or would be in a cross shape or so. Everybody would be able to choose basically what type of home they would like to live in. And that has been the start for this one topic within the office.

Density is one, also housing for everybody but in a comfortable housing within inner cities. That has been started as this competition and it's been a research project ever since. So indeed the colorful one, the installation, which was done with, and many many moments in between, very often we're done with different universities for instance to really get new and fresh ideas, but every time evolving and developing further. Like how could you live in the tallest tower but still very many next to each other for instance, but still have enough daylight, still have place to go outside, still have this greenery. So it's been an evolving, and every time it has a little detour, and every time we use of course this knowledge and experiment in our projects.

Yeah, it's flexibility and giving diversity first of all. And therefore, I mean we also then give it a color, that's not always the case, but it's just indicating it's more like a diagram if you will, to show that these differences are good and there are opportunities. And it's indeed we try to create spaces for everybody and not just for a niche market. So we indeed go from high end to the social housing if we talk about residencies, and to advocate that we do this kind of research projects and start to maneuver and move with the trends of course.

Yes. Yeah, one of the earlier projects also is the Silo Dom in Amsterdam as well. It's a former harbor area, it's a very vast building, it looks like a container ship maybe. But there we really try to find from social housing to more mid-level to high-level housing, to always find sort of to create little neighborhoods within the vast building. So there also you see quite colorful neighborhoods, but every time adding a type of common space to it. So sometimes it's the widening of the corridor just as a little means, that doesn't always have to be expensive, but just a space where you can put a little pot of plants or have a little table so you can meet your neighbor. And adding a big tribune on the outside there as well, to always emphasize that people meet each other coincidentally or on purpose, but that's for them to choose. Totally done with these little things sometimes. So this kind of in-between spaces I think are very necessary also in an ever denser environment. You just need to have an escape room somewhere sometimes, and work with climates. So yes, the culture and the location really, of course, also work with that. We try to explore where we are and what are the opportunities within each location, every time and time again.

Yeah, well, highly sustainable. I think sustainability and architecture is in essence actually a contradiction. Building is not sustainable in itself, so how to minimize your footprint. And I think keeping the building, to whichever structure, is already sustainable in itself. And that was indeed, it's in the outskirts let's say, it's a little village annexed to Rotterdam City. And the first time I went there, the client was like, 'Yeah, actually we bought this object but we don't really know what to do with it. It's just really big and it was cheap, but now we need to make a home out of this.' So it was indeed quite a shock to step in because at that moment it was 900 square meters and it's just one, and it has just one facade, so the rest is building. So it was very introverted, and it had two really tiny little patios, but at that moment it was all cubicle, so it was one big office space. And I really don't understand how people could work there, but they did for a long time. But it was quite extraordinary that the client actually had this vision of, 'Okay, if I just take everything out, it could become a home.' And it was a very good vision because indeed now, we opened up the patios, connecting the two, making really a big one big garden in the middle, and all the spaces are oriented towards it. So it's not oriented to the outside but really to the inside. And so yeah, keeping the building first of all, I think it's — and of course it needed upgrades, so there's all kinds of new systems in there like a heat pump etc., and a smart ventilation system, natural ventilation of course, which was actually quite a puzzle still because it's built in... And trying to really focus on the patio itself being the gem of the home, always being able to open up and go outside straight away, and have sort of crisscross moments through the patio instead of going all the way around it. It needed some work and it needed a sort of vision, so it started with a client. And you don't see it from the outside, so it's very modest in that sense.

And then exactly, yeah, that's I hope indeed we as an office are very much recognized for of course the icons and the high-end, I totally understand, but there's a whole range that we try to take care of. So we don't specialize, that's not very handy if you want to be efficient, but it's always a challenge. So that's really something that we have I think in our DNA to always challenge the client and the location and the brief and to find the priorities there. And that indeed does not always end up as an icon. That's, and I'm glad. So not every project has to be an icon. No, no, that would be, we would be out of work pretty soon.

Yeah, that's a beautiful statement. And of course it's super urgent and everybody knows it, so it's something you cannot go around. What is a hundred percent, that should be the question of course. But we wanted to just challenge ourselves really there to say okay, we're going to really do this. And therefore we approach it in many different ways. As I already explained, we do a lot of social projects and public places, so public realm, so that is one part of being sustainable. We do transformations, I think that is really a good way to start, to indeed first look at what's there already and can we keep it. And maybe it was not a historic place, it doesn't need to be listed, but it can as a monument let's say, but what's there you need to not just take for granted and understand how much space you take from our planet also in terms of density. Really be smart in how you use the area that we have, and keep the secure parts that we have still for either nature originally or new nature. So those are topics that we have in our DNA I think from the start of the office. And the certificates, the SDGs, we of course always try to embed and negotiate or discuss with the clients or the city what can we prioritize. And it's not all, everything should be 100%, that is of course the ideal, but you always have to see what really makes sense in a specific spot or location or with a brief and of course a budget.

Well, I hope indeed into this more sustainable direction. And just to add to that previous question, also is that within our office, we have many groups of specialists. We're large enough now to really have the knowledge to design a facade or design an interior, but also of course to design very sustainable principles. So within the office we have a group Next and Climate, and there they really focus on what is the newest on the market in terms of material. We try to develop our own software for carbon footprint, so we try to monitor really from the start of projects what can be done and what kind of sizing do you need, and how can you really use it as a design tool. And I hope that's also going to be a development within the urban planning, that you understand where to put the priorities and how to be sustainable from the start, and not just add it at the end as a label or a certificate.

Exactly, that's the hundred percent. Thank you very much, it was really a pleasure having you here. And let's hope so that Emerald soon has some projects in Lithuania. And then yes, we will see each other again.