Interview with Winy Maas

By Alessandra Orlandoni - 8 January 2010

Alessandra Orlandoni - Is the Datascape matrix your pragmatic approach to a project?
Winy Maas - I’d rather call it “direct”. Pragmatism conjures up something boring. I hope that MVRDV walks the fine line between reality and experimentalism. We believe that architecture must be about facts and real life experiences, and be comprehensible to ordinary people; it has to communicate clearly what it wants to be and what it wants to say. At the same time our projects have to be forward-thinking, experimental and explore new possibilities for the future. That type of experimentation needs communication. That explains as well the directness of the work. Experimentation needs an agenda, knowing what’s to be done in the future, what the priority elements should be, and making sure they show up in your building.
Datascape is a research method done from about ten to five years ago and published in our earlier book Farmax. It’s a technique to explore the set of invisible rules that govern architecture and town planning - social and political rules, and so on, by literally showing them and their consequences, their maximizations; it’s also a way of making these rules as explicit as possible. It gives you a set of clear, real data that forms the blue print for deciding what would be right or wrong in a given context. They intend to discuss whether we should keep these rules in the future, or if we need updated ones.

A.O. - So first of all you “map” information about the place.
W.M. - With Datascape, yes.

A.O. - Is it a start or a conclusion?
W.M. - Datascape is a synthetic “temporary” result. Let me give you an...