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New year – #NewZaanstad: The executive Program for the Knowledge of Space, successfully run for the past four years with hundreds of participants, has been upgraded! With its new name ‘#NewZaanstad there is new content, too: #NewZaanstad will be part of the implementation of both, the Spatial and the Social Vision of the municipality towards 2040 and beyond. We focus on learning how to practically integrate these visions in the daily work in this rapidly growing city. While we continue to promote multidisciplinary collaboration and sharing knowledge across departments, there is more: The program is now also open for strategic partners who want to co-create the future of Zaanstad with us. This week #NewZaanstad was launched at the festive New Year’s reception. It includes master classes, workshops, excursions, trainings and much more. We start off with a session by Tim ‘S Jongers on ‘explaining poverty to people with money’ at Zaantheater. This year’s wonderful editorial team includes Koert-Jan Van Hees, Rianne Kleine Koerkamp, Lennart Graaff next to Lisa Schouten, Meike Westers and Hilde Bloemers. The original Program for the Knowledge of Space was set up together with Marc den Hertog, Frits Palmboom, Bregt Balk and others in 2021 when I joined Gemeente Zaanstad. Looking for forward to great learnings and collaborations in 2025!

This is a truly Happy New Year! ‘Making Space’, the vision for the urban development of Gemeente Zaanstad until 2040 and beyond has been officially agreed upon by the Municipal Council in the end of 2024.
‘Making Space’ is a spatial vision for the future that is firmly rooted in 5 basic principles that ensure spatial quality and address the contemporary urgencies and transitions a growing city faces.
This is the first time that Zaanstad, famous for its many windmills of Zaanse Schans and the cradle of the European industry made an integral vision for the entire municipality. Today the 170.000 inhabitant city is rapidly growing to 200.000+ in the Metropolitan Region Amsterdam. The vision is part of the portfolio of elderman René Tuijn, who, next to our team, proudly wore the t-shirt I let made (and is shown above) in the council gathering. It shows the map of the vision and its essence: The 5 principles. The vision was commissioned by director Lennart Graaff.
It was a great ride to co-author, inspire and take care for the continuity of this poject together with Anne Langenesch and the team of professionals finishing this job included Joyce Goudschaal MCD, Lisan Adolf, Marian van den Brink, Mirjam Hoetjes-Witjes, Tijs Rothweiler and many others. The beautiful maps based upon my workshop atelier results and a draft by Urban Synergy were made by Lisa Schouten, Jasmijn Hofman and Esra Esen. The friendly impressions of the key projects were made from my rough sketches by blau.

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.

Within the Program for the Knowledge of Space (iKPR) at Zaanstad Municipality we organized a privilege walk with the audience: one step ahead for benefitial socio-economic factors, and one step back for disadvantages.
It was confronting to see for the particpants, that some of them were in a very privileged position, while at the same time everybody realized that little factors or unforeseen incidents can increase insecurity easily for everybody.

The ‘walk’ was part of a film viewing addressing the lack of housing and economic homelessness, a rapdily growing phenomenom in the Netherlands. The documentary shown was the new feature film ‘Scheef’ (‘crooked’) by Falkyfilm, Annemarije Rus and Tanja Warning.

On October 17 students of Journalism and Media at the University of Amsterdam made a short documentary on housing in Amsterdam with a focus on nature inclusive building.

One of the projects, earlier featured in Mathias’ lectures on building for biodiversity, is De Warren, a cooperative housing project designed by Natrufied, (Boris Zeisser and others). Mathias was asked to explain about cost and return of nature inclusive building, as part of his research for nextcity.nl‘s “3rd Guide to Nature Inclusive Building” featuring monetary and non monetary aspects of designing and building for biodiversity.

Watch the short feature video of less then 6 minutes on youtube here.

On October 16 Boris van der Moehlen presented his Master project on the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. For Mathias as a teacher this was the last commission meeting, preparing the student to be ready for the final presentation.

Boris’ final project proposes a landscape design for an economy of sludge, turning the Belgian polder of Doel into a new form of agriculture with benefits for the Antwerp harbour, it’s economy and river traffic as well as the ecology of this newly developed estuarium between the river Schelde and the Northsea. A strategic and design project taking into account a larger ecosystem and the interdependencies in this time of energy transition, biodiversity loss and climate change.

It was a privilege and great fun to inspire Boris as a teacher and commission member and see his Master projects finding a perfect balance between utopia and dystopia, while at the same time coming up with a realistic proposal, featuring a new form of land use that can be scaled up to other river delta areas around the globe. The team of co-commission members consists also of urbanist Herman Zonderland of Amsterdam Municipality and landscape architect Jan Maas of Boom.

Fully booked celebration of 10 years nextcity.nl at the International Architecture Biennale exhibition in the New Insitute in Rotterdam on the 19th of Sepember. The event was ‘silent disco’ style amidst the exhibition with intimate earphones.

After a lecture by Mathias on 10 episodes of 10 years nextcity in 10 minutes Maike van Stiphout walked with the group through the expo and Sophie Floor Wartenbergh lectured on the development of urban ecology (see picture). A panel with young talent Bas Tibben and Michael Rikkelman concluded the content before the group mingled for drinks and networking on the sunny terrace.

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, 2nd 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 5th, 2024.

Image: Urhahn | stedenbouw en strategie