If the management of housing density, environmental sustainability and collective dimension of space — not without a certain dose of spectacularity — have long been recurring elements in MVRDV’s work, the recently completed “La Vallée Verte” complex in Bordeaux represents a further, coherent expression of these principles.
The project forms part of the masterplan for the Bastide Niel district, also designed by the firm: a new urban precinct on the right bank of the Garonne, converted from a former industrial and military site. Here, the built landscape is defined by irregular and deliberately distorted geometries, generated through a parametric design approach that optimises orientation and solar exposure to provide each building with balanced natural light throughout the year and prevent mutual shading.
The latest project, situated at the north-western end of the neighbourhood, is also based on this same principle. Composed of three volumes arranged on a triangular plot and converging towards an internal courtyard, the complex houses 70 dwellings of various types, as well as communal spaces and facilities.
Whilst the façades facing the street remain restrained and compact — clad in a smooth, light-coloured shell to limit the heat island effect — inside, the building’s mass is hollowed out and distorted, as if struck by a meteorite and as though, over time, the resulting wound had been gradually healed by nature.
The façades are "stripped bare’" to reveal a sharp structural framework, and the central courtyard is transformed into a dense, layered "crater" covered in greenery of every kind: flowering shrubs, small trees, evergreen and deciduous species intertwine in a continuous composition that rises from the garden to the loggias, punctuated by a frenetic rhythm of pots and planters, suggesting the landscape of an artificial valley with different levels of vegetation and biodiversity.
A possible foreshadowing of post-anthropogenic scenarios, or — more simply — a radical way of reinterpreting collective living and the benefits of contact with sunlight and vegetation.