‘Polite Yet Radical’ Housing in the Netherlands by MVRDV

MVRDV Built a Mountain Range in Eindhoven

Dutch studio MVRDV has completed Nieuw Bergen, a residential complex in Eindhoven that does something most housing developments never quite manage: it looks like it belongs.

The project brings 237 homes to a low-rise historic neighborhood without overwhelming it. The secret is in the roofline.

Each of the seven blocks steps gradually upward, the massing rising from street-level brick to a 17-story white stone tower called Indigo.

The roofs are angular, grass-covered, and tilted to chase the light. Penthouses tuck into the slopes, their ceilings shaped by the geometry above them.

The buildings go by color: Indigo, Violet, Bleu, Rouge, Orange, Jaune, Vert. Together they trace what founding partner Jacob van Rijs describes as a mountainous landscape along the skyline.

Polite, he says, and simultaneously radical. Looking at the photographs, that feels exactly right.

Three of the towers open onto elevated terraces with glass parapets and gridded frames. One includes a greenhouse for communal gardening. The thinking is simple: density doesn’t have to mean isolation. Neighbors can exist, and even meet.

At street level, two restored 20th-century buildings anchor the complex in its context. A new facade between them reconstructs the symmetry of a block that no longer stands. Old city and new city, made to agree.

Seven buildings. Seven colors. One skyline that didn’t exist before.

The angular roofs do double duty. Photovoltaic panels run along their slopes, quietly earning back some of what the building consumes.

We’ve seen plenty of examples of Dutch architecture pushing boundaries, and this is yet another example.

Photography by Ossip van Duivenbode.