MVRDV: Carbon Confessions
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MVRDV: Carbon Confessions
Exhibition
Mon, Mar 23–Sun, Apr 26
Campbell Elmaleh Gallery
Lecture by Rutger Huiberts
Thurs, Apr 2, 4–5 PM
Campbell 153
As the world faces an increasingly urgent climate crisis, there is growing pressure for the construction industry to reduce its carbon emissions, prompting a wholesale rethink of the way buildings are developed. With a longstanding emphasis on sustainability, MVRDV are strongly aligned with the principles of this change. But what does that mean in practice? In Carbon Confessions, MVRDV tells their story from the heart of what Germans call the Bauwende, or construction revolution. The exhibition shows the ideas, ideals, everyday actions – and yes, the missteps and missed opportunities – of their quest for carbon reductions.
The exhibition provides a storyline of MVRDV’s journey in sustainability, including the office’s early evangelism for density and mobility, its efforts to implement sustainability in its own operations with vegetarian lunches and the creation of The Green Dream Foundation to offset its travel emissions, its missteps in relying too heavily on sustainability consultants, and the foundation of MVRDV NEXT, a combined climate and technology unit within the office that helps to drive the firm’s current focus on carbon.
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On display for the first time in North America and for the first time in partnership with a university, Carbon Confessions offers the UVA School of Architecture an opportunity to learn from this timely research in practice. The exhibition is complemented by a lecture by Rutger Huiberts, AIA (Director of MVRDV's New York Office), providing deeper insight into the award-winning firm's “carbon cases” and showing calculations of the embodied carbon of MVRDV projects using the software CarbonScape – which MVRDV will soon launch for public use. These carbon cases provide transparency into the methodology MVRDV now uses to measure, and more importantly change, the climate impact of its projects.
About MVRDV
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MVRDV was founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Now, the three founding partners lead a dynamic and optimistic team of over 300 alongside partners Frans de Witte, Fokke Moerel, Wenchian Shi, Jan Knikker, and Bertrand Schippan. Based in Rotterdam, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin, and New York, MVRDV has a global scope, providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues in all regions of the world. Their highly collaborative, research-based design method involves clients, stakeholders, and experts from a wide range of fields from early on in the creative process. The results are exemplary, outspoken projects that enable our cities and landscapes to develop towards a better future.
The work of MVRDV is exhibited and published worldwide and has received numerous international awards. More than three hundred architects, designers and urbanists develop projects in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative design process that involves rigorous technical and creative investigation. MVRDV has an in-house Climate Team, which consults with design teams across the entire company to ensure the sustainability and resilience of our work. As a group of specialists, MVRDV NEXT develops and implements computational workflows and new technologies to rationalise designs, speed up processes, and make projects more efficient and adaptable in the face of change.
About Rutger Huiberts
Rutger Huiberts, AIA, leads MVRDV's New York office since August 2025. He worked at MVRDV’s Rotterdam office from 2011 to 2013 and returned to the firm as director after more than a decade working at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.
In his roles at KPF and MVRDV, Rutger has developed a strong and diverse architectural acumen, working on a wide variety of project types in locations around the globe. His passion and curiosity for everything that architecture has to offer, and his particular focus on computational and data-driven design, sustainability and urban placemaking, help to lead MVRDV’s wide-ranging, innovative, research-based design philosophy.
Since 2022, Rutger has also served as Co-chair of AIA New York’s Global Dialogues Committee, organizing a number of lectures at the Center for Architecture in New York City. Through his efforts in this role, he has shown his commitment to architectural dialogue and to strengthening the architecture profession.
This exhibition and lecture are part of Leftovers: Rethinking Waste in Design, an exhibition and public programs series to rethink how we make, reuse, and imagine materials and environments in a time of climate urgency, generously supported by UVA Arts Council.
