Ludo Groen is a doctoral candidate in the history and theory of architecture (gta) at ETH Zürich, while practicing architecture from his eponymous studio. His doctoral research, part of the SNSF-funded research project “Switzerland: A Technological Pastoral,” documents the architecture of Swiss banking before and after 1968.
        Between 2018 and 2021, he worked as a researcher at The Berlage at Delft University of Technology and Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch institute for architecture, design, and digital culture. At The Berlage he was involved in the organisation of lectures, master classes, teaching, and various book projects. At Het Nieuwe Instituut, he contributed to various exhibitions and research projects, including Automated Landscapes, which will be published in the forhcoming book Automated Landscapes, documenting the emerging automated architectures of dairy farms, greenhouses, data centers, and factories, in the Netherlands and beyond.
        Ludo holds a master degree in architecture from Delft University of Technology and a post-master degree from The Berlage.
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MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio
Het Nieuwe Instituut
Curation*
November, 2021
The exhibition displays the MVRDV archive as a living entity in office spaces, rather than in museum galleries. As a working environment, the office is the place where ideas and projects move fluidly back and forth between present, past, and future. Comprising their first 400 projects, the MVRDV archive was acquired in 2015 by the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning at Het Nieuwe Instituut. It stretches across 76 metres of shelves and includes drawings, sketches, models, correspondence, photographs, and magazines – but also 3.62 TB of digital data. All have stories to tell. For this exhibition, we invited some of the less visible collaborators of MVRDV to share their recollections. From clients and engineers to former employees and interns, these recorded oral histories will join the archive and, thus, the writing of the firm's history.




©MMXXII