Together with viusal artist Marius van Zandwijk we developed a spatial intervention for the Dutch outdoors in the East of the Netherlands. This folly made of industrial fencing in custom greens discusses our relation with landscape and nature in general.

Entitled ‘claim’ the installation explores the roles of nature and men in the Anthropocene. Do we understand nature? Can we capture nature? Who is included and excluded when it comes to this ambigous relation?

The design of this folly is entirely made of second hand industrial fences and can be reused after the installation. We developed the design for a small art festival in Norg (Drenthe) in summer 2025.

This week the students of the P1b studio at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam led by Mathias as their tutor presented their final designs. The students of urbanism and landscape architecture developed proposals for the train stops in Zaanstad Municipality. A rich harvest of new ideas for these future nodes for transit oriented development. Images of the work for Krommenie-Assendelft by Arjen Brinks (feature) and above by Matthijs Breunissen for Koog aan de Zaan.

In September 2024 Mathias organized an afternoon on designing and building with wood in the creative makers’ space De Hoop in Zaandam.

Pioneer Jaco Woltjer of Woltjer Berkhout architects and Eric Thijssen of Mark Koehler Architects introduced the basic facts about wood, but also discussed construction, process and scaling up this sustainable building material in the current practice of architects, housing corporations and developers.

This event was part of the Program for the Knowledge of Space Mathias has been organizing with colleagues at Zaanstad Municipality since 2022, and co organized with urbanist Marc den Hertog who also made the picture in this post.

On behalf of the team of authors Mathias delivered a lecture of the almost finished Urban Development Vision 2040 and Beyond ‘Making Space’ of Zaanstad Municipality at the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam on 9/11.

In the consecutive weeks groups of students will develop spatial and urban planning schemes for one of the key projects listed in the vision. Mathias will join the students again for mid-term and final reviews. At the University the project is conducted by Mariska van Walsum and tutored by Erik de Graaf.

2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Zaanstad Municipality, a merger of seven smaller municipalities. Babel Zaans Architecture Platform celebrates this birthday and reflects upon the city of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

I am grateful to support Babel in challenging students and (young) professionals to envision Zaanstad over 50 years in a one-day workshop, and to better understand today’s urgencies, and challenges in relation to urban development.

Join this workshop on Saturday September 14, from 11-17hrs!

We will meet on the creative HEM brug area, famous from the past Big Art fairs and where ZAMU, one of the largest Dutch museums will be opened soon. Babel has invited top notch inspiration speakers to inspire this unique workshop: Wouter Pocornie of Bijlmer Believers 3.0, Kristian Koreman – ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles] and Ton Venhoeven – VenhoevenCS

Practicalities:
Location: Affuitenhal 1, 2^nd floor at the Hembrugterrein (Building Magazijn 14) in Zaandam. Participation is free. Limited spots are available, so please register via: https://www.stichting-babel.nl/agenda/workshop-ontwerp-de-toekomst-van-zaanstad-in-een-dag

The results will be presented during the Babel Festival on October 5^th, 2024.

Image: Urhahn | stedenbouw en strategie

End of June 2024 a session on Transit Oriented Development for a number of traffic nodes in Zaanstad brought together municipal and regional experts from various disciplines to play with these possibilities of urban development within the existing city. Urban development at traffic nodes has many advantages, such as comfortably contributing to the mobility transition and creating space for work, housing and amenities with the urban quality of a destination.

I was honoured to kick off this session of the Program for the Knowledge of Space of Zaanstad Municipality, and present the results of one of the groups, including Mark Degenkamp of VRA, Mirte Rozenmond and Raymond de Hullu of Zaanstad Municipality. In total 5 traffic nodes of a potential new high quality public transport line and the existing train lines were exlored, based upon preliminary research by Like Bouwman as part of het work for Sweco consultants.

How do we make room for work? The future of industrial estates

Preparing the implementation of the Zaanstad Spatial Vision ‘Making Space’, I was invited to join a reseach project and give feedback to an investigation into future significance of industrial estates.

On July 2, ‘Working Landscapes in Transition’ will present the results of this design research into six industrial estates in the municipality of Zaanstad that can be role models. Come by and discuss the insights with the researchers and involved authorities!

Sign up here to join on July 2nd!

What might you learn?

· What is the spatial impact of energy, mobility and climate transitions
· How we shape a new, sustainable economy
· A radically different view upon future landscapes for work
· The role of governments
· How design research helps make stronger and better choices

Vereniging Deltametropool Provincie Noord-Holland Gemeente Zaanstad Buro Moon CAS OTO BRIGHT Cooperative BURA Ana Luisa Moura Casper de Canne Gottfried Leibbrandt

Making room for work is becoming increasingly important in qualitative urban development. What can you learn from 20 municipality experts?

On Monday 10 June 2024, I organized a bike excursion on the combination of living and working in project development with a team of Marc den Hertog and other colleagues at the municipality of Zaanstad.

Making space or work is an increasingly urgent theme in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (MRA) and the province of North Holland. Despite heavy monsoon rains 40 professionals from 20 municipalities came to Zaanstad. I was able to introduce the 5 principles of our Vision on the Built Environmental 2040, in which the principle of ‘developing the city for work and housing’ has a key role.

Later, I could give a sneak preview of the new spatial programmatic framework for Zuiderhout Noord: a highly urban development for the residential work city of the future near the Zaandam intercity station. Colleagues then provided explanations about residential work combinations on the HEMbrug heritage site and in Poelenburg urban redevelopment area.

A working session in Achtersluispolder concluded the day in the De Hoop breeding ground. Nice to share the top 5 interesting conclusions:

• The Zaanstad goal to add 28% work next to facilities when developing new homes is a crucial change of course.
• Mixing living and working is possible at building level, such as in the plinth, but better at block, plot or area level. A lot is possible through zoning.
• Moving space or sliding space is essential to enable developments in the existing city.
• Municipalities have an important role; their visible investments at the beginning are stimulating incentives.
• Working does not stand alone, but is part of a system with, among other things, mobility and energy in which advantages and disadvantages require careful spatial solutions.

We are therefore looking forward to the results of a research that we are doing together with Province of Noord-Holland and Vereniging Deltametropool.

Nature inclusive design and building is just one of the spatial topics that require inspirational images, next to hard facts in order to make builders, developers and governments more enthousiastic about the power of design.

Ai can help deliver those images. It is astonishing how fast AI tools for image and text generation have been developing over the past months. Midjourney, of which some 5-minute-work examples from a while ago depicted here, is a quick tool. With the right prompt and some excercise the generated images help to inspire and discuss.

Also, it’s a lot of fun and still full of flaws. Bikes with no back wheel, hands with 4 or 6 fingers, those kind of innocent things. But also the request for ‘people’ generating only white male persons in the image.

In any case, an additional valuable communication tool, an extra. Not a replacement. It still requires clever prompting, excercise and knowledge to get what ou want.

How to define growth with quality? What are the criteria, and is there a maximum to growth? An interesting question if you want to add not only housing, but work spaces and social amenities such as parks to a city in order to make it future proof.

As quartermaster city architect Mathias was asked to do some research by design in the form of little finger excercises for a series of locations in Zaanstad municipality. Based upon the no-net-landtake vision upon the built environment until 2040 and beyond (in Dutch: Omgevingsvisie) it was suprising how much growth is possible within a a strong conceptual appproach rooted on integral spatial quality.