The Shift Embassy will be built by MVRDV: the sustainable architecture takes the form of a futuristic megalith designed to accommodate life

Social enterprise Shift has just revealed the winner of its international competition, launched in January 2025, inviting architects, engineers, artists and ecologists to design the new Shift Embassy, which will be built in the new Waterkant district, on the banks of the Maas river which bathes the southern area of RotterdamThe project, selected from eighty proposals, is called Rotterdam ROCKS!: the Shift Embassy will be designed by the famous MVRDV studio, who has created a sort of futuristic megalith capable of expanding the river landscape well above street level, making it “climb” between caves, pedestrian paths and porous walls designed to accommodate life.

The Shift Embassy, ​​a building that aims to showcase the future

The international design competition announced by Shift for the creation of the “Shift Embassy“, in Rotterdam, was born with the aim of “create a point of reference dedicated to a future in which man and nature live in symbiosis”. The building, which aims to inspire visitors to want to be part of a large-scale ecological change, will be built on the southern bank of the Maas, in a soon-to-be-built neighborhood destined to become an important cultural attraction, as well as a pleasant place to live and work.

According to the words of Don Ritzen, founder of the social enterprise that launched the call in January 2025, the construction of this building aims to create the social momentum needed for “moving from complacency and helplessness to hope, imagination, and collective action for our shared future“. To do this, Shift decided to combine immersive art, architecture, community building, storytelling and concrete examples of sustainable living and business practices.

Rather than talking about the future, the Shift Embassy aims to show it: therefore the project includes – in addition to the inevitable 200-room hotel – a 5.000 m² immersive experience called “The Elysium”, training spaces and a panoramic terrace. All within a new neighborhood, the Water edge, which will house 3.750 new homes, schools, a sports campus, commercial and cultural spaces and a new railway station.

A few days ago Shift finally announced the winner of the contest: it is MVRDV, a studio with offices in Rotterdam, Shanghai, Paris, Berlin, and New York that boasts over three hundred talented architects, designers, and urban planners. The project chosen for the Maas riverbank is called Rotterdam ROCKS!, and consists of seven gigantic overlapping rocks arranged around two main paths that cross the “caves” inside it.

Rotterdam Rocks!: The River Landscape Goes Vertical

The project will occupy an important site in the southern part of the city, destined to become an emblematic example of the transformation of the city's former port areas in new urban neighborhoods. In a certain sense, the heart of the Waterkant is also a tool for imagining a city that is once again developing around its river. Nowhere else in Rotterdam will the Maas be as easily accessible as in this neighborhood.

The Rotterdam ROCKS! project seems to loudly interpret this desire for “Green and Blue” proposing a river landscape that does not stop at the river but continues vertically through planted terraces, public paths, water systems and entire habitatsNature finds space inside the building but also on its surface: the external cladding, explain the architects at MVRDV, will feature cavities and niches that provide space for soil, water, plants, and animals.

Our first step in approaching this project was to broaden the brief: we need to reduce carbon emissions and create inclusive spaces for people, trees, plants, water, air, and animal habitats, balancing the need for new built spaces with new landscapes to offset our ecological impact. Our design integrates these human and natural spaces, playing with porosity to keep the project compact while maximizing its ecological value.

has explained Winy Maas, founding member of MVRDV.

The project is also a test bed to experiment in the field the potential of low-carbon construction. Not only does the construction feature the use of recycled steel, low-carbon concrete and new manufacturing techniques, including robotic manufacturing and large-scale 3D printing, but it is also designed to be a “materials bank” intended to remain part of a long cycle of adaptation, recovery and reuse, extending the value of the building well beyond its first life.

Biotopia: Buildings become lush forests

Designing a new building based on sustainability inevitably raises a contradiction: often, in fact, the most sustainable building is the one that already exists and is renovated. As stated on the MVRDV studio website,

Rotterdam ROCKS! can't present itself as a solution simply because it exists. It must justify its environmental impact by reducing carbon emissions, embracing circular construction, supporting biodiversity, remaining adaptable over time, and making these ambitions public.

Thus, the building becomes much more than a destination and a testing ground, taking on the contours of an example that intends to answer the crucial question: “If the goal is to develop buildings that are completely neutral, completely recyclable, that offset damage to society, that are metabolically active, how can we move in this direction?”. The study talks about this “Biotopia”: a future world where cities transform into lush forests, architecture grows like trees, and streets are illuminated by bioluminescent light.

The rounded geometry of the rocks itself is inspired by nature: the different orientations, the architects explain, produce distinct conditions of sunlight, shade, wind, exposure and shelter, allowing the emergence of awide range of microclimatesBut we're still talking about the future: the climatic conditions of different environments will be studied, mapped, and used to determine the best location to allow soils, plants, water systems, and nesting sites to thrive, as happens along the Maas River.

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