Cities and their making understood and sometimes imagined .
Imagine opening the news tomorrow morning to find that a major city or region has been struck by a catastrophic earthquake. Thousands of people are feared dead. Entire neighbourhoods have collapsed. Roads have become impassable, communications have failed and emergency services are overwhelmed. Whether the next disaster happens in...
Imagine opening the news tomorrow morning to find that a major city or region has been struck by a catastrophic earthquake. Thousands of people are feared dead. Entire neighbourhoods have collapsed. Roads have become impassable, communications have failed and emergency services are overwhelmed. Whether the next disaster happens in...
Why new cities can be engines of growth, symbols of ambition, and expensive disappointments all at once NEW Tashkent is taking shape! Recent reportings of a new city in...
INBOX: “Results of the design competition ABD in XYZ”. This or similar is the email subject many of us are waiting and hoping for. Usually it is marking the...
The Seduction of Form Cities have always had a love affair with appearances. From the grand boulevards of Haussmann’s Paris to the neoclassical dreamscapes of the City Beautiful movement...
Germany’s housing market has long stood at the intersection of economic stability and social equity. In recent years, however, a growing crisis—marked by soaring rents, a stagnating construction sector,...
For two weeks, I have been hiking in Germany with my sons. For once, not being in a car or on a bike but solely dependent on your own...
I have to confess – I am a big lover of Japanese Metabolism. It was a movement in the 1960s and 1970s that imagined a better future and firmly...
Take a journey. Not a comfortable one.
When Noor, a 28-year-old nurse in Amsterdam, was finally offered a full-time position at the University hospital of the University of Amsterdam, she should have been thrilled. Instead, she...
Imagine opening the news tomorrow morning to find that a major city or region has been struck by a catastrophic earthquake. Thousands of people are feared dead. Entire neighbourhoods...
As artificial intelligence grows more capable by the month, societies everywhere are wrestling with a question that feels both futuristic and strangely ancient: what will be left for human...
It took a while to finally conclude who will be President of the United States from January 20th on. The outcome in the end is what was predicted. But...
Cityscape Global 2025 in Riyadh felt different this year — not less ambitious, not less glittering, but certainly more grounded. Gone were some of the ultra-shiny NEOM mega-models that...
What Western Planning Misses About Urban Life in Africa For decades, African cities have been treated as incomplete drafts of somewhere else. They are measured against Paris, London, Singapore...
NIMBYism – “Not In My Back Yard” – has long been treated as a local irritation. The sort of thing that happens when a new building goes up, a...
When in 1910 Adolf Loos gave his lecture and subsequently published his essay “Ornament and Crime” it was a reaction to the Arts and Crafts movement with its overly...
Why Friction Matters in the Future of Urban Life The modern city is obsessed with comfort. Climate-controlled interiors, frictionless mobility, seamless services, ever more space per person, and an...
Recently, Germany has been discussing new standards for the size of parking spaces. The reason: the old ones do not leave enough space for the most popular products of...
At RIXARCH 2026 in Riga, I my lecture [LIV]-[IN], the Hyphen between housing and living, I spoke about the expansion of living beyond housing and the architectural question of public space. The lecture explores how living developed from a single location housing into a multi-location practice where we use different places during different times of […]
At RIXARCH 2026 in Riga, I my lecture [LIV]-[IN], the Hyphen between housing and living, I spoke about the expansion of living beyond housing and the architectural question of...
On 05 October 2023 I bid farewell to the role of Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In my speech, I looked back on six years in that role and what has been achieved, but I also looked forward to what the future of urbanism and urbanism education holds. After that my […]
On 05 October 2023 I bid farewell to the role of Head of Urbanism at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. In my speech, I looked back on six years...
I have spent my career moving along the boundaries of architecture, landscape, and urban planning—spaces where disciplines overlap, cities evolve, and new ideas emerge. From London to Shenzhen, Semarang to Accra, my work is driven by a fascination with how places grow, adapt, and shape the lives of the people who inhabit them.
Writing, speaking, and teaching are essential parts of that journey. They allow me to question assumptions, share what I’ve learned, and learn from others in return. I write to make sense of the forces shaping our cities, to communicate ideas clearly, and to provoke thoughtful debate. I teach because every new generation of urbanists brings perspectives that push the field forward. And I speak publicly to connect practice and policy, bridging the gap between technical expertise and the broader conversations cities need.
Today, alongside my work with MLA+, I serve as Chief Technical Adviser to a nationwide spatial planning reform in Saudi Arabia with UNDP and UN-Habitat. When time and context allows, I am also teaching and have been heading the Urbanism Department at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture and at the Shenzhen International School of Design.
Cities are constantly changing; my motivation is to help steer that change – in words and deeds – toward more resilient, thoughtful, and inspiring futures.
