Jacob van Rijs

Jacob Van Rijs (Amsterdam, NL – 1964) Founding Partner, Principal Architect, and Principal Urbanist, has led MVRDV’s interdisciplinary team since its establishment in 1993. Co-founded with Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries, the award-winning Dutch practice has achieved international acclaim for a wide variety of buildings, cities, and landscapes that are innovative, experimental, and merge theory with practice.

In his designs, Van Rijs combines daring design ideas and concepts with this humane and user-friendly approach. Since the office was established, he has been responsible for leading a broad range of projects, from cultural and civic buildings to transformations, and from residential buildings including social housing to interiors. Renowned past projects led by Van Rijs include the Mirador social housing (2005) in Madrid, Frøsilo (2005) in Copenhagen, Future Towers (2018) in Pune, India, WERK12 (2019) in Munich, and Pixel (2024) in Abu Dhabi.

Alongside his leadership role at MVRDV, Van Rijs is active in academia and the broader profession. He is Professor of Architectural Design at the Architectural Urban Design and Engineering (AUDE) unit of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), and has previously held academic positions at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany and the Technical University Munich, as well as visiting professorships at the TU Delft, ETSAM University Madrid, Royal Academy of Arts Copenhagen, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He has also served as Chairman of the Jury for Europan 15’s Rotterdam sites, Chairman of the Board of Archiprix International, Chairman of the Board of the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, and a Board Member of the Dutch Trade and Investment Board.