The current Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of urban public spaces in achieving health and social well-being (Dobson, 2021; Poortinga et al., 2021), prompting policymakers and urban planners to rethink their approach to the design of these spaces. They now propagate adapting urban public …

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public spaces are being redesigned and revalued. In the ZonMW project ‘From Prevention to Resilience’, we aim to understand these changes both in the short term, mapping the more ad hoc responses to the pandemic in public space, and in the long term, exploring how public …

Urban planning for climate change is a complex topic for historical and large cities like Alexandria, which are also coping with economic and demographic pressures. In this project the design of water engineering is drawn into the horizon of the local population, by mapping several containment measures …

WHY? (ADAPT) The city of Liège is suffocating because of extreme car hospitality. Public space has been stripped down to traffic space, serving the singular purpose of moving and parking polluting, dangerous and space inefficient cars. Global challenges concerning pandemics, climate change and sub-urbanization …

People in western countries spend approximately 90% of their time indoors. This severely affects their health (WHO 2013; Klepeis et al. 2001). The health risks are exacerbated if people travel between indoor spaces by car or public transport. Buildings on streets specifically designed to create a human …

Digital nature can provide a substitute for real nature for those who have limited access to green space, or are confined to their homes, for example during the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown. In a large-scale online survey, respondents (N = 1203) watched videos of digital nature, varying in terms of type …

People in western countries spend approximately 90% of their time indoors. This severely affects their health (WHO 2013; Klepeis et al. 2001). The health risks are exacerbated if people travel between indoor spaces by car or public transport. Buildings on streets specifically designed to create a human …

Increasingly, adding trees to the city is a new goal on the urban agenda in order to fight climate change. There is an interesting contrast when looking at the average lifespan of trees in the city: 30 years. The reason is that trees are still being seen from a utilitarian perspective and as urban furniture …

The rehabilitation clinic I designed for severe gaming addicts is conceived as an architectural antidote to the digital world and is based on the principles of social reintegration and physical reconnection. The rehabilitation clinic provides a 12-week programme for 13-25-year-old gaming addicts, …

According to myth, Rome was created more than 2,500 years ago on two hills. Romulus climbed the Palantine Hill and Remus took up position on a nearby hill, the Aventine Hill. From here, the city grew over seven hills into an unprecedented metropolis. Two millennia later, its inhabitants have barely …