I have a special and personal connection with the French Pays d’Auge. I appreciate its beauty and qualities but I am also seeing it decaying. My personal motivation, my role and mission as urban designer pushed me to think of a way to save – or better, upgrade – this beautiful valley. We know that …

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 …

This graduation project provides a comprehensive investigation into the decline of the liveability of the UNESCO World Heritage city: Venice. It sheds light on the dichotomy between liveability and (over)tourism, and proposes a new perspective for Venice, which in the last 20 years has undergone a massive …

This chapter explores the use of “responsive” or “interactive” urban media technologies as a tool or “building block” in the (re)design of urban public spaces. This is especially relevant as in the last two decades, urban development and digital technologies have brought out new types of urban typologies …

Martijn de Waal bezocht op uitnodiging van Het Nieuwe Instituut de opening van de achtste editie van de architectuurbiënnale van Shenzhen. Naar aanleiding van zijn bezoek aan de tentoonstelling Eyes of the City schrijft hij over hoe de opkomst van camera's, AI en deep learning het leven in de stad verandert …

This booklet shows the urban metabolism of five different cities around the globe. From small, Venice, to extra large, New York. We took the city as the human body; integral, dependent on multiple organs and based on comprehensive flows. Mobility, typology, nature and history go hand in hand in the total …

Ever since, the recognition of the causality between earthquakes in the Northern part of the Netherlands, more specific the Region Groningen, gas production and the ensuing damage to houses and buildings in that area, society faces big challenges in policy-making. Not in the least because the above-mentioned …

The surge of smart city technology, thinking, publications and consultancy offerings is significant. This implies there is something seriously developing. But to what extent is this a new development? In this paper the case will be made that urban design has always had to include new technologies and …

The Exodus of rural settlers to urban centers with greater attractiveness of quality of life, has brought serious consequences to the rural environments all over the world. An example of this phenomenon is Spain, that has around 3,000 abandoned villages, half of them in Galicia. These settlements have …