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Paper STRUCTURES: Stan Allen, Villa VPRO

This paper analyses Stan Allens review of MVRDVs Villa VPRO, a building for the
headquarters of the VPRO broadcasting company in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and
compares it to Piet Stams review of the same building as well as Allens own review of Le
Corbusiers Carpenter Center. While Stam analyses the building from the idea of the
classical villa and how it is transformed and evolved by MVRDV, Allen is more concerned
with the how of MVRDVs design methods rather than the building itself. In other words,
Allen approaches the building from an ideological point of view while Stam uses a more
phenomenological and analytical approach. Allens review of the Carpenter Center similarly
reflects this concern for how and why choices were made in its design. Ideology is
something that Loos utilizes heavily in his parable of the Poor Little Rich Man where his
fictional architect sees his role as to design the complete living environment. Loos uses this
to argue against this type of total design, while Allen applies it in the converse to describe
MVRDVs work as landscapes that are open to change. This comparison suggests that the
lens of ideology can be a powerful tool for analyzing buildings beyond their surface
appearances to uncover the modes of design and practice that are operating behind the
scenes.
Allens review of the Villa VPRO appears after a short description of the building, in
which its architects emphasize both an office landscape approach as well a desire to
work on and exhibit problems of information and data. The drawings and diagrams that
accompany show the voids that make up this landscape, as well as the multiple layers of
systems superimposed on the plan. Allens review itself is titled Artificial Ecology: An
Editorial Postscript, indicating both an interpretation of MVRDVs working method from a
biological perspective, as well as a desire to both add on to and comment on MVRDVs
description. Allen characterizes MVRDVs approach as one of radical pragmatism, where
a stubborn insistence to working rationally through data, but not through conventional
design methods, results in uniquely unexpected outcomes (Allen 108). The artificial ecology

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of the title is its result, where the unpredictable needs of the client necessitated a building
that could be flexible and open to growth and change, even after the building is
constructed.
Piet Stams review begins with VPROs wish to have the new building evoke the villa
atmosphere of its old offices. He spends most of the review walking the reader into the
building through a detailed description of the spatial sequences and experiences, which is
supported by large photos that show the wide variety of villa-like spaces in the building.
Stam compares the building to Herman Hertzbergers Centraal Beheer and argues that the
latters repetitive spaces allow individuals to claim their own territories within the building,
while the Villa VPRO restricts such appropriation, instead offering varied spaces to move
through, creating ones own narrative.
Though both reviews are of the same building, they differ greatly in their methods of
describing the building, the key concepts used, and their analysis of what is significant in
each building. Stam takes a clearly phenomenological approach that prioritizes the spatial,
visual and tactile experience of physically walking through the building, while also
connecting it to the concept of the villa and historical precedent. Allen, on the other hand,
does not reference any specific building element or space in the building in his review. He
is instead more interested in the architects working method and how it differs from the
conventional practice of architecture. However, Allen also seems to project his own
interests onto his interpretation of the building. Though published two years after the
review, Allens concept of infrastructural urbanism is almost exactly the same as the
artificial ecology that he uses to describe the Villa VPRO (Allen, Infrastructural
Urbanism). It also goes further than MVRDVs own report which uses the term
landscape to describe the blurring of interior and exterior in terms of space and
topography, but not in the biological sense of a framework for change that Allen interprets.
As a widely published architect and influential voice of landscape urbanism, Allen brings in
much more of his own ideas into the review compared to Stam, whose descriptions of the

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spatial sequences are more objective in the sense that he does not use them to further any
larger thesis about what the building is.
Allens interest in the practice of architecture is made clear in his introduction to
the book Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation. Here he criticizes a dumb
practice that fits itself into the boundaries of codes and conventions, and advocates for a
pragmatic realism where the limits are found not through an analysis of the past, but
from a material practice that mediates between abstraction and matter (Allen,
Introduction xviii). This is strikingly similar to the working method of MVRDV that he
praises in his review. In addition, Allen also argues that architecture should be understood
through the emergence of ideas in and through the materials and procedures of the
architectural work itself, and that writing about architecture should help to clarify this
process (Allen xxiv). Thus, Allen believes that writing should not simply describe or analyze
in reference to established conventions but uncover thought processes in order to open up
new ways of practice.
Such an approach can be seen in Allens review of a different building: Le
Corbusiers Carpenter Center. Here, he analyses the building through the lenses of
Modernism and movement, and how the building fits into those ideologies. Though Allen
begins the review with a walkthrough of its entrance like Stam, he uses it to introduce the
concept of movement and how other architects and theorists have dealt with it, thus
opening the review to a whole other string of references and resources. He then goes into
detail about possible influences and processes on Le Corbusier in creating this movementimage, such as his cardboard cuts and his imagined choreography of the sound and
movement (Allen 107, 111). Similar to how the modern phenomenon of datascapes is a key
influence in MVRDVs practice, Allen identifies the influence of film, mathematics and
Deleuzes any-instant-whatever in Le Corbusiers design. The second half of the review
focuses on the use of reinforced concrete, where the physical realities of construction and

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climate are strategically manipulated in service of lightness and movement, for example in
the flat slabs without beams or capitals, and the smooth finishes of the concrete.
Allens review of the Carpenter Center is much longer than that of the Villa VPRO
and more detailed, perhaps due to the historical perspective of writing a few decades after
its completion in comparison to the latter, which was written contemporaneously. Allen also
does not try to fit in his ideas of landscape and infrastructure into his interpretation of Le
Corbusier, but instead draws in related thinkers and ideologies of his time in order to plot
out the background of ideas influencing Le Corbusiers design intentions. Thus, both
reviews still align to his position on practice and criticism as mentioned above. They do not
try to describe their subjects in a comprehensive manner that describes the experience of
every space and detail, but focus on the key points where the architects intention and
material reality collide to give a unique result the moment when ideologies, whether that
of Modernist movement, information or landscape, negotiate with the realities of the world
in a performative practice (Allen, Introduction xxiii).
Ideology plays a big role in the analysis of any work of architecture. In Adolf Loos
parable of the Poor Little Rich Man, the ideology of the gesamtkunstwerk traps the man
into a situation where everything has been decided for him, symbolizing the power of ideas
over materials or spaces. Although Loos argument was made in the context of the
excessive ornamentation of the Vienna Secession and the need for self-expression, Stam
raises the same issue in pointing out how each space in the Villa VPRO has been carefully
and uniquely designed, to the point that the faade that expresses these differences has
thirty-five different types of glazing, leaving no space for individual expression. However,
Allen sees the Villa VPRO as the reverse: much more amenable and open to user
improvisation (Allen, Villa VPRO 34). Here it is impossible to determine which view is
right, perhaps suggesting that while an ideological lens can be a useful way to explore the
architects mode of practice, the actual performance of the building according to its

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ideology will depend on how its users actually inhabit and occupy it, where ideas make the
leap into reality.
Bibliography
Allen, Stan. Villa VPRO. Assemblage (no.34 December 1997): 92-109.
Allen, Stan. Infrastructural Urbanism. In Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the
City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 1999: 46-57.
Allen, Stan. Le Corbusier and Modernist Movement. In Practice: Architecture, Technique
and Representation, 42-47. Australia: G B Arts International, 2000.
Allen, Stan. Introduction: Practice vs. Project. In Practice: Architecture, Technique and
Representation, xiii-xxv. Australia: G B Arts International, 2000.
Loos, Adolf. The Poor Little Rich Man. In Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays, 18971900, 125-127. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.
Stam, P. (1999). Villa VPRO. The Architectural Review, 205(1225): 38-44.