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...

This special issue brings together the work of the EU COST Writing Urban Places network. Using narrative approaches to analysis and design, the network highlights the specificity of local urban cultures in contemporary European cities. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines (architecture, urban studies, literary theory, sociology, media studies), the issue explores spatial approaches that promote responsible, site-specific and socially inclusive design strategies for European cities....

The Netherlands was made by humans. Cities, polders, the landscape and even nature reserves have all clearly been shaped by man. The country’s planned development is as unique as it is famous.

This book describes the intriguing history of spatial planning in the Netherlands from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Where does this strong tendency towards regulation and planning come from? Did these thousands of plans always come together? Or did planners and urban designers sometimes ge...