Articles by Andreas Luco

MVRDV’s pixelated façade design brings variety and identity to prefabricated modular towers in Singapore. At Irwell Bank Road in Singapore, two 36-story residential towers have been completed, with a lively, pixelated façade design contributed by MVRDV. Taking as a base the highly efficient, prefabricated, modular building design by Singapore-based ADDP Architects, MVRDV’s variegated façade adds liveliness to the buildings’ external appearance and highlights the green communal spaces on the buildings’ 24th floor and roof. The design is the latest in MVRDV’s oeuvre to show that efficiency and cost-effectiveness can happily coexist with character and individuality.

Near Aroeira, where the Atlantic breeze tempers the pine forest and low density preserves quietness, this dwelling arises from the clients’ desire for a private, simple, and refined atmosphere — a discreet house that does not impose itself on the act of inhabiting, but instead nurtures it. A retreat from the bustle of city life they once knew, capable of embracing a calmer, slower rhythm. Rooted in an idea shared by the couple, the project takes form as a contemporary reinterpretation of the Mediterranean and Islamic courtyard house: an introverted ensemble of spaces that open inward, articulated through patios that regulate light, air, and temperature, weaving an intrinsic dialogue between interior and exterior — not through rigid boundaries, but through subtle thresholds.

“Xuebei Home”: The Native Homeland in an Urban Village，This project involves the reconstruction of a 44-square-meter collapsed ancestral home in the old city of Qiaodong, Huizhou.

Developed along the banks of the Babahoyo River in Ecuador. Two hundred years ago, the river was home to more than 250 floating houses; by 2010, over 80 families had been displaced to municipal housing developments located six kilometers away, disconnecting them from their commercial, social, and cultural ties, as well as from their traditional ways of life. Today, barely twenty-five homes remain afloat on the river, under conditions inadequate for community development. Given this situation, the project proposes a public and private space (for local inhabitants) that revalues the floating ecosystem by recovering traditional building techniques for the preservation of the river’s social and natural habitat.