Seoul searching

Earlier this year I interviewed Winy Maas of architects MVRDV about a beautiful small-scale project he was doing in Rotterdam called Didden Village. Back then I wrote: "MVRDV’s signature “obsession” — the word Maas uses for it — is density:

Earlier this year I interviewed Winy Maas of architects MVRDV about a beautiful small-scale project he was doing in Rotterdam called Didden Village. Back then I wrote: "MVRDV’s signature “obsession” — the word Maas uses for it — is density: the idea of using urban space intensely to create a sustainable future."

When I met him he was just off a plane from Seoul. It turns out what he was doing there is this:  Gwanggyo, a competition-winning future city which MVRDV have imagined to house 77,000 people self-sufficently. The terraces provide green space, also creating ventilation and minimising water use.

MVRDV have a great history of radically reimagining cityscapes, from their book Five Minute City (everything you need within five minutes travel), to radical urban farming, Pig City, to thought experiments like Skycar City (what if someone invented a car that worked in 3D). They make the future sound fun again.

I found news of this latest project this on Bruce Sterling's Wired Blog. Sterling comments giddily on MRVDV's prize-winning design: "Great to see some out-there major building for people who aren't, like, bloated panic-bankers and outre Bond-villain petrocrats. If we could just pry the red-hot cash away from the jittery financial overlords and bloodstained fossil merchants, and spread it around the general planetary population, man, tomorrow's cities could look great."