This diagrammatic model, developed to discuss the disposition of various elements of a new housing estate in Amsterdam with its clients – a private investor–developer and an affordable housing cooperation – embodies tacit knowledge in multiple ways.

First, the model tacitly extends an invitation to the stakeholders involved in the project to discuss this new part of the city in an open manner. By making the elements of the model very different – to express different atmospheres, neighbourhoods, and spaces – it invites the stakeholders to play around with the model. It thus tacitly conveys how a community of stakeholders was formed through an open design process.

Second, the components of the model represent what Nathalie de Vries at the time called ‘The New Collectivity’: small collectives of people living in apartments with identical typologies, as well as variouscommon spaces, together forming a community of diversity.

 
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Nathalie de Vries, founding partner of MVRDV, has led many successful MVRDV projects with a focus on the invention of new building typologies and the creation of changeable, open systems. De Vries combines her work for MVRDV with a position as Professor of Architectural Design and Public Building at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft, and as City Architect of the municipality of Groningen.

This object is part of the TACK Exhibition “Unausgesprochenes Wissen / Unspoken Knowledge / Le (savoir) non-dit”, in the section “Codes and Communities”.