Snijpunt_Huis_Didden_L1010944, originally uploaded by JagerJanssen architecten BNA
Winy Maas’ of MVRDV new project, Didden Village is in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Sky Lark:
MVRDV’s signature “obsession” — the word Maas uses for it — is density: the idea of using urban space intensely to create a sustainable future. Worldwide, MVRDV has implemented this in massive social housing developments like Silodam in Amsterdam and Mirador in Madrid. Why, then, would he want to take on their little project? But for Maas it was the kind of thought experiment he loved. “Before we even finished our sentence, he had started drawing,” van de Kamp recalls.
The result, Didden Village, is literally a blue-sky solution to the Didden family’s problem. It is an architectural palimpsest, a new structure added to an old one, in line with MVRDV’s mission to make existing spaces work harder. The “village” consists of three bedrooms built on the roof: a big room for the parents and two smaller, semi-detached ones for the two boys, each a distinct houselike shape and separated symbolically by what Maas describes as “a main street.” The whole represents both the connections between the family members and their need to go their own ways.