The Why Factory, a research and education institution led by MVRDV's Prof. Winy Maas, has opened its new exhibition at the Architekturgalerie in Munich, exploring The Why Factory's ten-year research and production conducted with Winy Maas and his students for the future of cities. The exhibition presents a worth-seeing chronological journey through a series of well crafted models, videos, projections and publications. 

Titled as "The Why Factory: Research, Education and Public Engagement (2007-2017)", the extremist model show gives an incisive idea about how The Why Factory's research projects can stimulate alternative living patterns with porousness, adaptability, communicative, intense, dense, innovative, robotic and fetishist - ranging from phantasmagoria to the real world.

Founded in 2008, The Why Factory, located within a covered courtyard at the Delft University of Technology, sets new visions and future scenarios for the development of our cities by theorizing, testing, experiencing and playing with all unexpected conditions of design and architecture to construct future cities - from universal to specific and from global to local.

These playful models from "Porous City" project are testing Vertical Urbanism in a powerful, communicative and expressive way to remove the boundaries of introverted tower typologies in contemporary urbanism. The Why Factory's "Next Tower" philosophy is not self-sufficient, arrogant or monotonous any more - which all want to be more accessible, public and interactive. 

Acting as a global institution and think-tank, The Why Factory acridly focuses on hypothetical societies and cities to transcend conventional living styles and intolerable serial architectural productions by narrating them with science and fiction and even harmonising them in a new medium and more expressive and powerful way.

The Why Factory's worth-seeing model show, experiments and projects are also unveiled in many publications, presented through numerous student works directed by Winy Maas and a team of researchers. 

The Why Factory's publications, delving into a variety of topics within a large spectrum, are presented with fantastic titles including "Visionary Cities", "The Vertical Village", "City Shock", "The Porous City", "Hong Kong Fantasies", "Next Beijing" and many more...

"This work is funded through public resources and, occasionally, throughout agreements with educational centres from all over the world. For this reason, in difficult times like this, The Why Factory wishes to hightlight the participation of the public sector in supporting advanced education and research," stated the Architekturgalerie.

"All projects, undertaken by the students of The Why Factory and a team of researchers, is an invitation to continue investigating about the city that is going to come. A future full of questions to answer, visionary, green, fantastic, fast, self-sufficient, sober, beautiful, (hi)storical, transparent, biodiverse, intimate, adaptable, free, open, emotional, amazing, natural, wonderful and common," added the Architekturgalerie.

"For 10 years, The Why Factory has worked on the agenda of the future of our cities. It produces observations, hypotheses and statements in a visual and direct manner," said Winy Maas. 

"It has led to a wide range of claims: the need for new leadership in urbanism and architecture in Visionary Cities; the wish for common sense in a world that seems to be dominated by individualism in (W)ego City; the advocacy for wildlife in Biodivercity; the claim for openness in Porocity; the desire for amazement in We Want World Wonders; the hope and need for acceleration of the green agenda in Green Dream; the push for the combination of small scale in densification actions in The Vertical Village; the exploration radical trend breaks and their effects in City Shock; the excitement and amazement of the new material changes in Barba; the expression of fear of the ultimately killing Absolute Leisure; and soon Copy Paste, a pamphlet for referencing and development," he added.

"The work of The Why Factory is a somehow strange phenomenon in scientific research - design research - which is commonly regarded as a "un-scientific" method. We use design research as a tool for innovation."

"It is a process of trial and error, where the goal is sometimes unclear and the end is open, but which leads to an exciting journey with a potentially spectacular outcome. Maybe it can be regarded as a true combination of science and fiction," explained Maas.

"All this work could have not been realized without the incredible input of our students and researchers. Students participate in a collective research, learn though this process and use their innocence to criticize topics."

"Meanwhile, researchers collaborate with students and motivate them to go beyond the fetishism of the individual product, so as to make the work comparable and productive, and to edit it to the level of the pamphlets we produce," emphasized Winy Maas.

"Through these 10 years, I have realised that the issue of the future has become more necessary as well as sexier. More and more films talk and speculate about it. More and more designers invent elements that serve the future. More and more leaders talk about the future. More and more architects dream about the future than ever," explained Winy Maas.

"We did not trigger the debate, but we have definitely contributed to it."

"Are we ready? By far not! The future demands lots of knowledge to inform and inspire others. The cloud of What´s Nexts suspended from the exhibition room ceiling is an invitation to further research on questionary, visionary, green, fantastic, fast, self-sufficient, austere, cute, (hi)storical, transparent, biodiverse, intimate, adaptable, free, open, emotional, surprising, natural, wonderful or common futures."

"There is so much to do. Especially in days of scepticism, populism and fear. We need so much input to make our future good. More funding is needed to do research and to produce visualisations on future mobility, future democracies, future economies, future healthiness, etc."

"And more funding is needed to share this work with the world and make it accessible to all. Think with us on the future! If curiosity make us unique, let us enlarge our curiosity! Let us share with us the What’s Nexts!," added Maas. 

The exhibition opened in June and will be on view until July 21, 2017 at the Architekturgalerie in Munich, Germany. The Why Factory recently worked on "A Zero Star Hotel" project within the scope of The Wego Workshop, is a continuation of the Wegocity project. 

A group of students from TU Delft, RMIT and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design worked on "a new hotel typology" proposing temporary living solutions for ever changing environments. 

Top image: A view from Wegocity project, testing maximum density with maximum desires.

All exhibition images © Saskia Wehler

Image of The Why Factory publications courtesy of MVRDV

> via The Why Factory/Architekturgalerie