Across more than three decades of collaborative inquiry, Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, and Nathalie de Vries have developed a distinctive design methodology in which formal repetition and modular variation act as tools for exploring spatial multiplicity within dense urban typologies. In this project, the notion of the “pixel” is no longer a metaphor but a concrete architectural grammar—each module operates as both façade articulation and spatial unit, contributing to a carefully orchestrated irregularity that breaks with the monotony of traditional high-rise housing. The oversized, golden structural frames that protrude from the envelope serve not only to demarcate apartments of varying typologies, but also to mediate light, depth, and views, creating a dynamic interplay between solid and void, interior and exterior. This formal language recalls MVRDV’s earlier explorations in The Interlace (2013), where horizontal stacking was deployed as a strategy for collective living; here, the same principle is reinterpreted vertically, generating a complex urban object that remains legible despite its apparent chaos. A close reading reveals that beneath the surface irregularity lies a strict compositional logic, where the pixel functions simultaneously as unit, frame and threshold. This approach reflects a mature and deeply analytical vision of housing as a layered, adaptable and fundamentally urban phenomenon, driven not by aesthetics alone but by a persistent methodological commitment to design through iteration.
