ARCHITECTURE
CITIES
LANSCAPES
ARCHITECTURE
CITIES
LANDSCAPES
Recent Publications.
Our publications reflect the programme’s strong research profile and international outlook. Books, journal articles, and chapters produced by the team explore architecture, urban and landscape transformation, and heritage from critical, interdisciplinary perspectives, connecting pasts, presents, and possible futures.
Under the Landscape
Building on the premise that landscapes provide a common ground where different kinds of knowledge may come together, this edited volume draws on a wide range of disciplines, including geology and geography, cultural anthropology and philosophy, architecture and art history. It suggests that the complex social and environmental crises of the 21st century cannot be understood independently of...
Assembling the Archipelago
his book explores the potential of heritage to enact sustainable human–environment relationships across geographical differences. It does so by travelling to four archipelagoes: the Wadden Islands in the Netherlands, the Cyclades in Greece, Shetland in Scotland, and the Aeolian Islands in Italy. In the face of planetary socioenvironmental crises, the reliance on sustainable development strategies, including the energy transition...
War, Military Settlements, and Planetary (Sub)Urbanization
War and military practices have shaped and reshaped cities and suburbia for millennia. Concentrated settlements hidden behind high walls were an important pattern of defence at a time before planes and aerial warfare. From the early twentieth century, decentralized settlements and urban deconcentration have provided better protection against military attacks. The Japanese military developed suburban settlements in the 1930s ...
The Architectural Essence of the Canal District
The ‘outstanding universal value’ of the grachtengordel is specifically recognized as a seventeenth/century monument of urban design, a well preserved ‘unique and complex urban landscape’ (Unesco Nomination, 2009: 106-107). Although its four centuries of history are acknowledged, and ‘the series of almost 4,000 listed buildings – houses and warehouses, churches, charitable institutions and almshouses – and hundreds ...
Post 65: Inspirerende Bouwkunst
Nederland heeft een belangwekkende architectuurcultuur, die ook in de recente, naoorlogse geschiedenis bijzondere gebouwen heeft opgeleverd – deels in bezit van het Rijksvastgoedbedrijf. Inspirerende bouwkunst, gaat in op de tijdgeest, ideeën en totstandkoming van de zogenoemde Post 65-gebouwen. Het gaat veelal om doelmatige gebouwen, vaak bijzonder in hun architectonische opzet...
Radical Planning History in Times of Crises
This article argues that contemporary urban crises demand a radical rethinking of planning history, yet these crises simultaneously constrain the capacity for radical imagination, a tension conceptualized here as the radical catch. Urban planning and history have historically served as instruments of statecraft and capitalist development, contributing to the very crises they now confront ...
Towards a Spatial History of Debt
This paper focuses on the multifaceted role of debt within urban development and planning. Drawing on David Graeber's conceptualization of debt as an integral part of human history, this paper first identifies debt as a key catalyst for economic development, speculation, and accumulation within the capitalist paradigm. Accordingly, we challenge the concept of the spatial fix...
Dwelling on the Green Line
Concealed within the walls of settlements along the Green-Line, the border between Israel and the occupied West-Bank, is a complex history of territoriality, privatisation and multifaceted class dynamics. Since the late 1970s, the state aimed to expand the heavily populated coastal area eastwards into the occupied Palestinian territories, granting favoured groups of individuals, developers and entrepreneurs the ability...
Friendship, Sociability, Interiority: : Eighteenth-Century Extended Homes of the Dutch Elite
Over the four centuries of its existence, Amsterdam's famous canal ring—a Unesco World Heritage area since 2010 - has changed substantially in appearance.' Created in two phases following council decisions in 1610 and 1660, the district was largely built with rows of houses along the canals, interrupted by streets or other...
Historical Atlas of Amsterdam
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...
The Heriland Handbook
This handbook is one of the principal outcomes of the Heriland project, funded between 2019 and 2024 by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under a Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie grant agreement. Heriland is the acronym for Cultural Heritage and the Planning of European Landscapes. It is a pan-European research and training network on cultural heritage in relation to spatial planning...
The Atlantic Wall Atlas
The west coast of continental Europe is scattered with countless remnants of one of the longest defence lines in history: the over five thousand kilometre-long Atlantic Wall. Stretching from the Arctic Cape to the Pyrenees, the Wall was intended to defend Hitler’s Third Reich against an Allied invasion. Over the course of the Second World War the line rapidly evolved into a multilayered network of coastal and inland ...
Calling on the Community
There is a call in Heritage Studies to democratize heritage practices and place local communities at the forefront; heritage plays an important role in identity formation, and therefore in social inclusion and exclusion. Public participation is often presented as the primary means to prioritize communities. However, studies focusing on public participation are typically descriptive in nature and lack...
Drifting peatlands and subterranean forests
Nicolaas Witsen (1641-1717) is known not only as an influential administrator and diplomat, but also as a researcher, collector and author with very wide-ranging interests. His best-known publications are Architectura navalis et regimen nauticum, which soon became a standard work on shipbuilding, and Noord en Oost Tartarye, in which Siberia and the surrounding...
Passion and Control: Dutch Architectural Culture of the Eighteenth Century
Passion and Control explores Dutch architectural culture of the eighteenth century, revealing the central importance of architecture to society in this period and redefining long-established paradigms of early modern architectural history. Architecture was a passion for many of the men and women in this book; wealthy patrons, burgomasters...
Imagination, Visualization and Architecture
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, commonly called “Schiphol,” is a well-known Dutch phenomenon. It is the country’s largest, most important airport and currently lies in the middle of the nation’s most densely populated urban area. Since its inception, much has been written about the airport: as a business, , as a contributor to the Dutch economy, and as a burden on the region...
The edges of the centre
TThis essay examines how contemporary critical environmental and decolonial frameworks and their emphasis on local knowledge can be relevant to European landscapes. This question arises in response to today’s multiple crises, which make it evident that the focus on progress and economic development,supported by geoengineering or terraforming, accelerates environmental catastrophes and reproduces ...
Archaeology in the City
In cities worldwide, urban expansion and renewal are increasingly accompanied by archaeological research. The massive presence of archaeological layers in many historical city centres, previously rather considered as an obstacle to urban growth, is now commonly perceived as an added value and a potential asset for development. The present book analyses the pitfalls and opportunities of this phenomenon, as well ...