Project Atelier Planet Texel

On December 17 2014, the City Council of Texel reached the unanimous decision to adopt the complete output of the IABR–2014–PROJECT ATELIER PLANET TEXEL, including the Texel Principles, as a guideline for development, as was advised by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen. Now Texel, the largest island to the north of the Netherlands' mainland, can begin implementing the proposed pilot projects, starting in the coastal village of De Koog.

PLANET TEXEL 2013-2014
The municipality of Texel, keen to sustainably develop the island, stands to take crucial decisions on a wide range of issues and policies, all of them with spatial reverberations. Therefore the IABR–Project Atelier Planet Texel was founded in 2013 by IABR and the municipality Texel together. Its main focus was on how the different ambitions of Texel –principally the further growth of the mainly tourist-oriented economy, the aim to realize energy neutrality and a higher level of self-sufficiency, and the sustainment of the unique natural environment and high quality of living of the inhabitants– can be optimally integrated in a wide-ranging spatial plan.
How can the flows of water, waste, traffic and tourists be optimized, preferably in conjunction with each other? By which means can the development of the natural environment and the landscape drive this process? And how can the island’s ecological and economic agendas, in particular with regard to the further development of the touristic-leisure product, strengthen instead of obstruct each other?

IABR–2014–Projectatelier Planet Texel

73% electrical power (wind and solar) and 18% biofuel (seaweed) generated in a coast protecting bay

Stakeholders
For a period of eighteen months, islanders, entrepreneurs, community organizations, different municipal departments, City Council and Board participated in the Project Atelier Planet Texel, giving their input, discussing the results and working together with the designers and experts that the IABR brought to Texel.

The Atelier has resulted in a vision for Texel embraced by all stakeholders. This vision of a sustainable future which the islanders can gradually work towards offers a productive framework for current plans and projects. The so-called Texel Principles, developed by the Atelier, provide clear guidelines for action and offer tools to make abstract concepts such as 'quality' tangible.
The proposals for pilot projects in a.o. De Koog, Nieuweschild and Polder Waal en Burg, elaborated in the Atelier by the design offices FARO Architects and LA4SALE, not only demonstrate the effects of the vision in specific locations but can also be implemented immediately.

Therefore, after the research by design trajectory and the presentation of the plans and proposals in the main exhibition of IABR–2014, the ball was in the City Council’s court. The unanimous decision reached on December 17 implies that implementation of the plans developed by the Atelier can now indeed begin.

IABR–2014–Projectatelier Planet Texel

seasonal recreation in a new sweet water retention landscape

Project Atelier Planet Texel is a collaboration between the IABR and the municipality of Texel. The Dutch offices LA4SALE and FARO Architecten have been commissioned to do the design research and to develop pilot projects.

^{IABR–Project Atelier Rotterdam}

The IABR–2014–PROJECT ATELIER ROTTERDAM: THE URBAN METABOLISM, researched and tested a new approach. Urban Metabolism is an as-yet largely unexplored methodology for spatial design and planning, and by implementing it the Atelier has helped to uncover a new field of work for urbanists. The method is an innovative interface between different policy areas, such as environmental and spatial development, and it productively connects agendas for local economic development and greater sustainability.

Results
The great interest shown in the results of the Atelier by a wide range of policy departments of the Municipality of Rotterdam and by the Port Authority of Rotterdam, emphasizes the value of this innovative approach to spatial development. On the national level, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment is now investigating how the results of Project Atelier Rotterdam can be integrated in its policies. And the IABR has decided to further explore the viability of the methodology in its partnership with the government of Albania; Atelier Albania is doing research on the metabolism of the country as part of its flagship project Towards a Resilient Albania.

The Municipality of Rotterdam makes use of the results of the Atelier in working towards a sustainable and circular economy, and they will be essential input for the next IABR–Project Atelier Rotterdam, developed as part of IABR–2016.

Sustainable development models
The IABR–Project Atelier Rotterdam – a collaboration between the IABR and the Municipality of Rotterdam – was set up as part of IABR­–2014 with the aim to develop more sustainable development models for the city by means of a large-scale research by design trajectory on the urban metabolism of Rotterdam. Active partners were the Port Authority of Rotterdam, the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, TNO and other stakeholders.

The metabolism approach assumes that every city is a complex, sprawling and active system that is unceasingly working to provide for the needs of its occupants. We can describe this system not just in technical or purely physical terms, but also in organic terms. Just as a human body breathes, drinks, eats, uses its senses, and excretes waste, so vital material flows can be identified and analysed in the "body" of the city, its metabolism.

What happens when we project this ‘naturalistic’ view on the city of Rotterdam? Where better to research, analyse and test the upgrade of the urban metabolism as a tool for its future sustainable development than in Rotterdam, one of the largest port cities and centrally located in the Rhine-Meuse Delta, one of the most bustling in the world?

The design offices .FABRIC and JCFO have mapped the material flows moving into and out of the city of Rotterdam and the Delta, analysed how these flows interact with the territory and space and explored how they can, individually and as system, have a positive impact on the (environmental) performance of the city. Based on this extensive research by design, specific proposals for pilot projects have been developed.

Nine short animation films were made to visualize the material flows; they can be watched from our website.

The results of the Project Atelier Rotterdam were not only presented in the main exhibition of IABR–2014–, they were also discussed in the symposium Tinkering with the Material Flows which took place on June 25, 2014.

The workings and outcomes of the Atelier were also published. Urban Metabolism Rotterdam can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Project Atelier Rotterdam is a partnership of the IABR and the Municipality of Rotterdam. The design by research was executed by James Corner Field Operations (JCFO, New York) and .FABRICations (Amsterdam). Actively contributing to the Atelier were the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the Port Authority of Rotterdam, the Rotterdam Climate Initiative and TNO.

The IABR initiates and produces the Project Ateliers as a lead partner for the Regional and Local Design Dialogue Program, within the framework of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment’s Action Agenda for Architecture and Spatial Design 2013–2016.

Reweaving BrabantStad

^{© IABR}

IABR–PROJECT ATELIER BRABANTSTAD was set up in 2013 by the IABR in alliance with the Province of North Brabant, BrabantStad (the municipalities of ’s-Hertogenbosch, Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda, and Helmond) and the water boards of North Brabant, to look for the opportunities that lie hidden in Brabant’s urban tapestry.
What would joining forces bring the cities of Brabant that they could not achieve on their own? What were the opportunities and which the obstacles? What would make Brabant cohesive, what would productively integrate different ambitions and actors? And how was such a bond best governed on the basis of interplay between the different parties?

Water as a Hidden Strength
Preparing the design of an alternative spatial vision and new development models in response to the stalled spatial and economic development of North Brabant, the Project Atelier conducted research by design in close collaboration with local stakeholders and informed by international experts.
BrabantStad is in fact a dispersed city, or better yet: an urban landscape. It is a mosaic, as extensive as it is varied, a carpet metropolis involving many forms of land use in high and low densities. The crisis hit the municipalities of North Brabant hard and many planned developments had to be discontinued. The question was how to address major socioeconomic and environmental challenges on a regional scale.
The water system proved the catalyst that got the spatial and economic development of the region going again. Economic vehicles concerning residential quality, agriculture, leisure and innovative enterprise were cleverly coupled with the water challenge, which resulted in an accumulative development strategy.
The Project Atelier BrabantStad has emphatically addressed governance issues as well as the spatial qualities of the region. It turned out to be the sum of local coalitions and projects that was able to reactivate the urban landscape of North Brabant, with the government facilitating social dynamics – provided that such developments also contribute to answering some of the major challenges.

BrabantStad Carpet Metropolis
The results of the Atelier were presented at the main exhibition of IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE– in Rotterdam. The dynamic playing field of the urban carpet of BrabantStad was made legible and tangible by literally creating a tapestry, designed especially for the main exhibition in collaboration with the Tilburg TextielLab.
The Atelier's outcomes were widely discussed by a large and diverse group of policymakers, entrepreneurs, and residents during the ‘BrabantDag’, organized by the Province of North Brabant on the platform of URBAN BY NATURE.

Travelling Carpet
After IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE–, Provincial Executive for Spatial Planning and Housing of the Province of Noord-Brabant Yves de Boer initiated and headed a Tour of the results of Project Atelier BrabantStad – tapestry first and complemented by an intensive debate program – through North Brabant from September 2014 to February 2015. The exhibition ‘MozaiekBrabant’ called on Eindhoven, Tilburg, Helmond, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Breda and became the platform for a province-wide public debate about the future of North Brabant: about how to use the Project Atelier’s results as a firm basis for the new Regional Plan for the Province of North Brabant that has to be completed by 2018.

At a number of locations, work on the translation of regional development principles into local project proposals continues to concretize. A pilot project proposal is being prepared for the Dommel valley and pilots have been launched in East Tilburg and ’s-Hertogenbosch. In the coming years, the water boards of Brabant will also further develop the Project Atelier’s proposals.

The results of Project Atelier BrabantStad were published in a book entitled Reweaving the Urban Carpet, which is available through the IABR.

In the film Het Mozaïek van Brabant (The Mosaic Metropolis of Brabant), administrators Yves de Boer (member of the Provincial Executive North-Brabant) and Frans Stienen (alderman in Helmond), and designers Joachim Declerck and Floris Alkemade talk about the Project Atelier. The film can be accessed through this website.

Project Atelier BrabantStad is a collaboration between the IABR, the province North Brabant, the municipalities of Den Bosch, Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda and Helmond and the water boards of North Brabant. The design research is carried out by Architecture Workroom Brussels, Floris Alkemade Architect and LOLA Landscape Architects.