All over Europe, cities struggle with an accumulation of environmental crises like global warming, the depletion of natural recourses, pollution and the extinction of species. If we want to keep our cities liveable, we have to make them circular and climate adaptive.

Making our planning methods, production processes and building economies circular in order to remove the causes of the environmental crises, is a tough assignment. Turning our cities into climate-adaptive environments, ready to c...

From nomadic labour to online services and from street food kitchens to pop-up shops, informality is on the rise as never before. Its transformative power can be seen in the new ways we produce, consume and live, with commerce playing a crucial role in these changes. The resulting tension between the formal and the informal is nowhere more evident than in the struggles over contested marketplaces.

This book provides a deeper understanding of the formal-informal linkages that have given shape ...

A multitude of port cities dots Europe’s coastline, all serving the purpose of facilitating maritime transportation. Over millennia, public and private leaders have built harbours, urban spaces and infrastructures in diverse territories to serve hinterlands, including landlocked capital cities and metropolitan areas. As nodes on the edge of water and land, port city territories embody knowledge on maritime flows and water conditions. At a time of climate change, they can be paradigms and st...

Amsterdam's Oostelijk Havengebied or eastern docks area consists of a number of artificial archipelagos laid out around 1900. When the once-flourishing docks fell into disuse, it was decided to transform the area into a high-grade residential district. Begun in the 1970s, that transformation is now almost completed.Jo Coenen, Sjoerd Soeters and Adriaan Geuze were among those who made the varied assortment of masterplans for the different areas. Many big-name Dutch architects contributed to fl...

Is the world better off with your building? In 99.9% of cases the answer is 'No'. Almost every building pollutes the air, water, soil and damages biodiversity. What if we turned that around and focused on making a positive contribution? If buildings purify the air, water and soil, create biodiversity and generate more energy than we use? Then we will heal the world with our buildings.

What Unilever's Paul Polman describes for companies in the book Net Positive, Vincent van der Meulen describ...

Dutch Waterworks Worldwide documents the story of architecture and landscape photographer Luuk Kramer’s journey documenting waterworks built by Dutch engineers around the world, from the sixteenth century to the present day, from polders in Poland to dikes and dams in Japan, from canals in Brazil to a small lock in Surinam.

The Dutch brought knowledge gleaned from centuries of experiences with living in a delta, including land reclamation efforts, droughts and catastrophic floods. They wer...

This book delves into the practice of Office Winhov, the acclaimed Amsterdam-based architecture firm, whose buildings elegantly blend the past with the present. Architecture Repurposed showcases Office Winhov’s adaptive reuse approach, combining contemporary transformations with respect for architectural heritage.

At a time when sustainability is paramount and our cities yearn for historical and cultural nuance, it is essential that existing buildings are transformed with care. Office Winho...