With a façade that resembles an eroded rock face, Valley by MVRDV provides elevation and a multitude of unique viewpoints for its residents.
Set in Amsterdam’s financial district, the mixed-use 75,000-square-metre high-rise by architecture studio MVRDV features three angular peaks with jutting stone-clad balconies linked by a terraced podium that emulates the low area of land between mountains – giving the project its name.
The tallest peak reaches 100 metres in height with a bar in its two upper storeys and 200 apartments and spaces for offices, shops, restaurants and bars below.
No two apartments in Valley are the same, meaning there is a wide variety of housing types. However, each one is orientated to maximise daylight with all apartments also having access to planted terraces – including those on the fourth and fifth floors, dubbed the ‘valley floor’, which will double as a public park.
The faces of each peak vary across each side, shifting from glass walls to rockier surfaces composed of stone-clad terraces, bay windows, and balconies.
On its jagged edges, the building also incorporates a “green layer”, where 13,000 plants, trees and shrubs have been planted by landscape designer Piet Oudolf and maintained by automatic irrigation systems and a team of gardeners.
The landscape design has been developed to ensure year-round greenery and is hoped to boost the wellbeing of the building’s occupants.
The plants, not currently visible, will be allowed an initial period of growth and acclimatisation before the building officially opens. The greenery will then reach its final lush appearance gradually over the coming years.
The stone cladding continues inside the building with the uneven exterior echoed internally at its heart, where a large atrium appears as though it has been carved out from a rock.
The project is hoped to make the city’s financial district “a more liveable and complete urban quarter”. It was first revealed by MVRDV in Amsterdam in 2015 after the studio won a competition to design it for developer EDGE Technologies.
MVRDV is a Rotterdam-based architecture studio founded in 1991 by Maas alongside Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. The firm has also recently completed the Ilot Queyries housing development in Bordeaux and opened Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen – the world’s first publicly accessible art depot.