Dutch architect Winy Maas' research and education institution The Why Factory has installed a colourful and flexible hotel that can be adapted according to the maximum needs and desires of the users to test maximum density and capacities for the future of urban dwellings.

Called (W)ego, the vertical installation, curated by DDW 2017 ambassador Winy Maas, is presented at Markt Square, Eindhoven throughout Dutch Design Week. (W)ego will be on view to the public till October 29, 2017.

(W)ego is a special concept developed as part of The Why Factory's comprehensive research for the future cities. (W) ego is developed as a realistic and experimental model that shows how people can live with maximum intensity or with maximum interaction. 

Derived from an innovative game tool by The Why Factory together with students from TU Delft and IIT Chicago, RMIT Melbourne and Bezalel Academy Jerusalem, the experimental "tailor-made housing" tests how evolutionary and flexible architecture can be as dense as possible, while adapting maximum desires of the users.

The (W)ego installation, representing a frozen moment in the living and flexible (W)ego vision at Markt Square, is made up of nine rooms and each room has a distinctive character shaped through the demands of different occupants. 

Some of them feature ladders to reach his/her upper floor neighbour, while some of them include only bed and bathroom equipment arranged in different layout. Each atmosphere is quite different in this vertical setting, they are differentiated with colours and facade configurations - but all rooms are connected with their neighbours.

"The future city is flexible. Have you ever dreamed of sleeping suspended high in the air? How would it feel to sleep inside a vertical hanging garden? What if your room was made of stairs? Would you dare to sleep in a room that was a billboard?," said Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV and founder of The Why Factory. 

"Or inside a shimmering grotto? What is your dream room? “Based on the hypothesis that the maximum density could be equal to the maximum of desires, this research conducted by the Why Factory explores the potentials of negotiation in dense context."

"Through gaming and other tools, Wego explores participatory design processes to model the competing desires and egos of each resident in the fairest possible way," Maas added. 

"In this installation, nine rooms are made to fulfil these idealistic but egoistic perspectives in a limited space. When confronted with the dreams of others, users must learn to negotiate with eachother. How to defend your ideals? Users start to work with and around eachother and, somehow, together create something that is even nicer."

"And with the surrounding intrusions and negotiations, one begins to feel that something interesting is happening ‘next door.’ Why not visit your neighbour? Thus, Ego becomes Wego," Maas explained.

The Why Factory's vision is detailed in a film that plays in one of the rooms of (W)ego. Visitors are interacting with the installation directly, they check the heights, the capacities

 of the rooms, the sizes of the spaces to sleep, move and to place your belongings, so (W)ego is a real test of your private environment with others.

The Why Factory stages four different interventions during Dutch Design Week, including a giant (W)ego city installation by The Why Factory displayed at Markt Square in Eindhoven, a film shown at the entrance of the Klokgebouw, showing The Why Factory's illustrations and models for future cities, the presentation in the Stadhuisplein Square of Eindhoven of the masterclass about the intensification of uses in Eindhoven’s city centre alongside with the presentation and launch of the new book "Copy Paste".

Founded in 2008, The Why Factory serves as a research institution and think-tank for the investigation of future cities within a covered courtyard at the Delft University of Technology, of which Maas is also a graduate.

"I offer a publication machinery where somehow the things become more public," said Winy Maas in an exclusive interview with World Architecture Community. 

Winy Maas' full interview can be read from here, with his discussions on other inputs of 'community design', the impacts of The Why Factory, MVRDV's design approach, and the problems of current architectural education. 

Dutch Design Week 2017 kicked off this weekend and will take place between 21 - 29 October in Eindhoven, Netherlands. 

All images © Ossip van Duivenbode 

> via MVRDV/The Why Factory