Amsterdam as a lab. That is what Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences' three fieldlabs and its many partners have in mind. Functional illiteracy, debts, learning deficiencies or problems caused by extreme precipitation: the city contains plenty of tough issues, demanding novel approaches in which co-creation and participation by residents, social organizations and knowledge institutions are basic principles.In the fieldlabs, people try to change current practices by working with, instead ...

This atlas presents the spatial development of Amsterdam through a series of historical and newly drawn maps, from the city’s humble beginnings to the present day, and in an international context. Comparisons are made between Amsterdam and cities like Venice, London, Paris, and Vienna.

Amsterdam originated around the year 1200 as a small port town at the mouth of the river Amstel. In the 16th century, the rapidly growing merchant town became the bustling centre of the province of Holland. A...

Spring 1934. In a boggy clay polder south of Amsterdam, the first sods are cut for what would become the largest urban forest in the world: Amsterdamse Bos. Over the next decades, the so-called Boschplan expanded into a unique project. Creating woodland in the polder was a technological tour de force, and Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder’s modern design caused a sensation at home and abroad. Equally unique were the conditions that surrounded the Bos’ birth. Amidst the hardships of ...

Amsterdam Architecture is the ideal guide for every visitor who wants to get to know Amsterdam's unique architecture better. This handbook covers the architectonic history of the capital city of The Netherlands from the Middle Ages down through today, and includes over 450 buildings from the past and present, which are to be found both in the old city centre and in the outer neighbourhoods. This seventh edition includes the most recent construction projects in the still-growing city. Of cours...

Living for Art is the life story of the eminent Dutch collector, art dealer, researcher and author Frits Lugt (1884-1970). Between 1901 and 1915 he worked for an Amsterdam auction house, which flourished thanks in no small measure to his efforts. In 1915 he started to collect paintings, drawings, prints and antiquities on his own account. While he collected great masters like Rembrandt, Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Watteau, he did not neglect other artists and acquired some outstanding works ...

Migration is one of the most pressing and complex spatial urban challenges in Europe today. Observing how newcomers, such as labour migrants, refugees, border crossers sans papiers, and asylum seekers are accommodated, we must conclude that at present not a single urban strategy convincingly enables us to receive new arrivals at the heart of our societies and cities. People are being stored in overcrowded refugee settlements on Greek islands, in squalid basement apartments in central Athens, ...

Antwerp is famous for becoming the northern hub of European trade around the turn of the sixteenth century. This international status went hand in hand with ambitious urban explansion plans, only some of which could be realized, and by around 1700 the city had contracted again inside its walls. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the port revived and industrialization brought renewed growth. New docks were built, the city centre was modernized, and the suburbs were integrated into the ...

During the 1880s, five ambitious artists, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand, ventured to the suburbs northwest of Paris to paint along the river Seine. Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: Along the Seine is the first publication to investigate these artists’ motivations for leaving the city to paint the suburbs and the profound influence that Asnières, clichy, and the surrounding areas had upon their revolutionary approaches to color and brushstrok...