‘A place of hope and solutions’: the building offering a better future

As briefs go, it’s an ambitious one: design a building that will accelerate the societal changes required to create a more sustainable future.   

It’s a bold mission that appears to be one step closer after plans were unveiled for such a building on the banks of the river Maas in Rotterdam. 

Billed as a place to help people “shift from complacency and powerlessness to hope, imagination and collective action for our shared future,” Shift Embassy promises to use the power of art, architecture and storytelling to showcase successful solutions to critical global challenges. 

Renders of the building were published on Tuesday after a proposal submitted by the architectural firm MVRDV won an international competition to build Shift Embassy.

The planned landmark is set to be at the heart of Rotterdam’s new “nature-positive” Waterkant neighbourhood, which will feature almost 4,000 new homes, schools and maker spaces, and will overlook a new tidal park.  

The embassy was the brainchild of Shift, a social enterprise working to scale-up solutions to pressing global challenges. In an interview with Positive News, its founder Don Ritzen said that the idea behind the building is to create a hopeful vision of the future – and hasten the change needed to reach it.

“Most people, when they think about the future, they think that it’s all going to shit,” he said. “In order to bring more systemic change, we need to create places where people get inspired and get hope again, where they feel empowered to take action, and where they can meet like-minded people.”

Shift Embassy, he says, will be one such place. Inviting visitors to experience a sustainable future that has already arrived (albeit only in some parts of the world), it will use immersive art, inspiring stories and exhibitions to showcase an alternative pathways to the ones humanity is on. 

“We don’t believe in telling people what to do,” said Ritzen. “We believe in showing them what is possible, and that it’s something that they can participate in. It’s going to be fun.” 

We need to create places where people get inspired and get hope again

MVRDV was chosen to design Shift Embassy after its proposal, dubbed Rotterdam Rocks, was taken forward by a judging panel. The plans will now be put to a public consultation, before the necessary construction permits are sought.  

MVRDV’s renders depict a rocky, vegetation-strew landmark on the banks of the Maas. Featuring a giant exhibition space showcasing “global success stories in nature, energy, travel, and circularity”, the building will also contain educational spaces, places for community events and a hotel.

“Rotterdam Rocks departs from how sustainability is traditionally communicated, bringing together joy, discovery, and surprise into a new architectural language,” said the judges. “We anticipate this building and its programme will invite people to rethink their everyday behaviour and encourage new ways of living sustainably together.” 

Winy Maas, a founding partner of MVRDV, said that the project will serve also as a “scale-up lab” to showcase the latest innovations in low-carbon construction.

“We need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to create inclusive spaces for people, trees, plants, for water, air, and for animal habitats, balancing the need for new built space with new landscapes to compensate our ecological impact,” she said. “Our design integrates these human and natural spaces.”