This June, the Department of Urbanism of the TU Delft organises an Urban Thinkers Campus about Education and the New Urban Agenda. The UTC happens between 7 and 9 June. To get more information, please visit the website and register HERE.
Speakers
Speakers by order of appearance
Wednesday 7 JUNE
Jacobo Herdoiza (Ecuador)
Jacobo Herdoíza, is an architect and planner graduated at the Universidad Central del Ecuador. He is the current secretray for Territory, Habitat and Housing for the city of Quito, where Habitat III took place in October 2016. He is managing a radical change in the urban landscape of Quito, a rapidly growing city.
Jacobo will speak about his experience as secretary, about Habitat III and the New Urban Agenda and how he thinks the NUA should be implemented in higher education.
Jacobo’s contribution is sponsored by the Delft Global Initiative.
Thomas Lindsay (UK)
Thomas Lindsay advises, researches and writes on the subject of risk and resilience within our cities. He works as Strategy Delivery Manager at 100 Resilient Cities – Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, and is co-founder of Urban Emergencies: Emergent Urbanism (UE:EU), an independent research and consulting group exploring international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the implications of emergent risks on cities and their inhabitants. Thomas has a background in Architecture and obtained his Master of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Cambridge. He has also held a position as an academic proof reader and supervisor at the University of Cambridge.
Mehrnaz Ghojeh (Iran)
Mehrnaz Ghojeh is Senior Consultant in Urban Development at BuroHappold Engineering. Above all, she is co-founder of Urban Emergencies:Emergent Urbanism (UE:EU), an independent research and consulting group exploring international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the implications of emergent risks on cities and their inhabitants. Mehrnaz’s expertise within the realm of cities’ resilience to risk stems from her involvement in a range of both governmental and non-governmental organisations across the UK, Middle East and China. She has worked closely with Tehran Municipality and the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES), advising on earthquake preparedness strategies, and reconstruction planning, emergency response measures, and risk assessment.
Suchith Anand (UK)
Suchith Anand co-founded GeoForAll with a vision to make geospatial education and opportunities accessible to all. He promotes open geospatial science through the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Labs/Research Centres in key universities worldwide as part of GeoForAll. GeoForAll aims to increase openness in Geo Education, helping students to become more creative and open minded, and contributing to building open innovation and increasing open knowledge for the benefit of society and for future generations.
In his lecture at the Urban Thinkers Campus “OpenCitySmart and NASA-GODAN Urban Farming Challenge”, Suchith will present geodata initiatives related to food security and agriculture, and to sustainable urban infrastructure management.
Veldacademie, City of Rotterdam
Otto Trienekens (the Netherlands)
Veldacademie, City of Rotterdam www.veldacademie.nl
Otto Trienekens is co-founder and manager of Veldacademie, a knowledge centre for neighbourhood renewal. In the Rotterdam-based office, students from different backgrounds work on actual socio-spatial challenges. Students are actively brought in contact with realistic cases, while practise is fed with the ideas and insights of students. After ten years of experience in Rotterdam, the concept of Veldacademie is now being adapted in other cities like Almere. At the conference, Otto will lead a discussion about the innovation of education in relation to practise.
Dr. Wolfgang Stempfer (Austria)
GB*: Gebietsbetreuung Stadterneuerung, City of Vienna http://www.gbstern.at
Dr. Wolfgang Stempfer is coordinator of GB-stern (Gebietsbetreuung Stadterneuerung), a decentral organisation for urban renewal, run by the City of Vienna. Spread around the city, private coalitions of designers, social workers and legal services work on an inclusive and embedded way on small projects. Making the difference for a liveable city.
Emerging from this experiences, dr. Stempfer did a research on the role of urban context in Architecture and Urban Planning studies. He made an extensive analyse, also based on a qualitative survey of existing educational systems at the Hafen University Hamburg and the Technical University of Vienna. In his lecture, Wolfgang Stempfer will speak about the outcomes of this dissertation.
Pieter Graaff (the Netherlands)
Veldacademie, City of Rotterdam, www.veldacademie.nl
Pieter Graaff is researcher and teacher at Veldacademie, a knowledge centre for neighbourhood renewal. In the Rotterdam-based office, students from different backgrounds work on actual socio-spatial challenges.
In his presentation, Pieter will share the experience of Veldacademie as an example of a practical approach with regards to integrating the present urban context into design education. The opportunities and experience with linking other kind of studies will be highlighted as well.
Robert Hermans (The Netherlands)
Director of the Department of Statistics on Labour, Income and Living Conditions at Statistics Netherlands
Robert Hermans is Director of the Department of Statistics on Labour, Income and Living Conditions at Statistics Netherlands and Director of Statistics Netherlands Urban Data Centres. He is also a member of the CBS-team that works on SDG’s. He has a 26 year working experience in policy-, research- and management positions in cities, provinces, private companies and research institutes in The Netherlands, Latin America and Asia. From 2007 to 2012 he was a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of CIDES, the International Centre for Sustainable Development in Panamá. Recently he joined the Advisory Board of the World Council on City Data in Toronto, Canada.
Robert Hermans graduated from University of Amsterdam in Urban & Rural Geography and Communication Sciences. He has worked at Statistics Netherlands since 2013.
Thursday 8 JUNE
DK Osseo-Asare (US/Ghana)
Low Design Office
Dk Osseo-Asare is a co-founder with Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC, an activist design think-tank, and is a principal of Low Design Office, an architecture studio that foregrounds low-cost, low-carbon building. His research recouples form-making with the social dimensions of the global environment, siting sustainability between technology and geopolitics. He received a Bachelor’s in Engineering Design and a Master of Architecture, both from Harvard University, where he chaired the student group Social Change and Activism. He previously worked for the architecture office MOS and has presented his work at the Royal Institute of British Architects, Harvard Graduate School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and the Kokrobitey Institute.
DK’s participation was made possible by Rachel Keeton, who is heading the URBAN LAB Adaptive Planning for African New Towns. Rachel is a recipient of a DELFT GLOBAL research fellowship.
Theodore Klouvas (NL/Greece)
Theodore Klouvas is Project Manager of Orange Corners Africa at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. He is a young professional schooled in Architecture, Urbanism & Building sciences, specialised in Urban Area Development with a strong passion for Entrepreneurship. He combines creativity and social empathy with analytical skills and organising capabilities, which he incorporates in innovative strategies and (project) designs.
Kritika Sha (India)
After spending a few years as an architect in India, I am currently a graduate student of Urbanism at TU Delft, working on two parallel projects related to development in the global south, with a particular interest to the socio-economic elements of informal settlements. This interest, newly discovered at TU Delft, ranges from theoretical exploration to the implementation challenges. Along with the regular coursework, I am also the current editor-in-chief of Atlantis (A quarterly publication by the students of the Urbanism and Landscape Architecture) and an active member of the student association (POLIS).
ARCADIS
As co-chair general assembly of partners business and industry advising on New Urban Agenda, Arcadis is sponsor of the World Urban Campaign which initiated the Urban Thinkers Campuses all over the world.
Bert Smolders (The Netherlands)
Shelter program manager partnership UN-Habitat Arcadis,
Bert Smolders graduated in Delft in urban planning and design, worked for projects all over the world on the relation of urban planning and disaster prevention and response, esp. urban flood prevention. Presently program manager for the partnership of UN-Habitat and Arcadis organising technical support projects for UN-Habitat and supporting the new urban agenda, as co chair business and industry in the General Assembly of Partners in the process preparing for Quito and presently in the advice on implementation.
Charlotte van de Water (The Netherlands)
Environmental policy consultant at Arcadis, www.arcadis.com
Charlotte van de Water is an environmental policy consultant with a background in urban planning and design and human geography and planning. After working for several years in the Environmental Protection Agency of Rotterdam (DCMR), she joined Arcadis she works in Brussels to international and European policy studies on sustainable urban development, urban governance and smart cities.
www.Facebook.com/ArcadisShelterProgram, https://www.arcadis.com/en/global/arcadis-blog/charlotte-van-de-water/look-before-you-leap/
Anne Loes Nillesen (The Netherlands)
Founder Defacto Architecture
Anne Loes Nillesen, author of Amphibious Housing in the Netherlands: Architecture and Urbanism on the Water, founded Defacto Urbanism and Architecture in 2006. Defacto is an award-winning landscape architecture and urban design business, which specializes in the delivery of coherent designs and analyses that integrate spatial and technical aspects. The office provides services from strategic development and research to public space design—working on and connecting different scales that reach from interiors to urban environments and from gardens to regional landscapes. An innovative combination of research and design is a key factor in Defacto’s work. Among clients are project developers, housing corporations, national and international governments as well as private clients. Defacto works in close cooperation with other disciplines and experts in order to come to integral and feasible strategies and designs.
Friday 9 JUNE
Alex Schafran (UK)
Alex spent ten years as an immigrant rights activist, social worker and housing organizer in California and New York before becoming an academic. In addition to teaching at Leeds, he teaches in the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po Paris and at Sciences Po Bordeaux.
In his lecture “The future of the urban academy”, he examines what major social and political roles higher education institutions which teach about urbanism and urbanization could play in the 21st century. It focuses on five points: integrating our classrooms, teaching practice by making practitioners teach, taking over the media, making the academy the center of public participation, and reinvigorating long-range planning.
Global Housing
Nelson Mota (Portugal)
Assistant Professor, TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Nelson Mota received his graduation in Architecture (1998) and his MPhil (2006) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, where he lectured in the period 2004/2009. His work as a designer was awarded in 2003 the Alexandre Herculano National Architectural Prize in the category of design of public spaces (with gtl montemor-o-velho), and in 2013 the Portuguese National Prize for Architecture in Wood (with Luís Miguel Correia and Susana Constantino). He was the recipient of the Fernando Távora Prize in 2006 and authored the book A Arquitectura do Quotidiano (2010), runner-up in the Iberian FAD Prize 2011. Since 2009, he is based in the Netherlands, where he developed his PhD at the TU Delft. He regularly contributes articles to professional journals, and papers to academic publications and conferences. He is particularly interested in topics that examine the entwined relation between modernity and the vernacular. Currently he is a lecturer and researcher at the TU Delft and guest scholar at The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design. He is member of the editorial board of the academic journal Footprint.
Dick van Gameren (The Netherlands)
Professor, TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Dick van Gameren is professor of Architecture and Dwelling since 2006. Currently, he is also chair of the Architecture Department. He graduated from TU Delft in 1988. After partnerships with Bjarne Mastenbroek and De Architectengroep, he now runs his own architecture firm Dick van Gameren Architecten, Amsterdam. He has been awarded various prestigious awards among which are the 2007 Aga Kahn Award for the Dutch Embassy in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, and a first prize in the second Europan competition, 1991.
He is the author of ‘Revisies van de Ruimte / Revisions of Space’ (010 publishers, 2005). He is an editor of DASH, Delft Architectural Studies on Housing (NAi publishers) and was an editor of the magazine Forum (1997-2001). He has taught at various institutes, among other the Berlage Institute and the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.
The production of affordable housing in Sub-Saharan countries has been utterly neglected since the dissolution of the colonial empires in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the last decades the whole region’s housing backlog increased relentlessly. Since the mid-1990s some countries have initiated housing programmes that have a benevolent motivation to cope with the country’s overwhelming housing backlog. However, they have all failed to create human settlements that accommodate the vernacular social and spatial practices. The focus is almost entirely directed to efficiency (i.e. fast, low cost solutions) rather than to resiliency (i.e. integrated, inclusive approaches). To “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, as expressed in one of United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, there is an urgent need to adjust the balance between efficiency and resilience. Design education can contribute to produce valuable knowledge to pursue alternative approaches to the current affordable housing programs implemented in many countries in the global urban South.
Since the academic year 2014-15, the course “Graduation Studio Global Housing”, organized by the Chair of Architecture and Dwelling at the TU Delft, has been developing in collaboration with the EiABC (Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development) an educational program focused on searching alternative solutions for the current housing strategy undergoing in Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa. One of the key methodological aspects of the course is the development of site surveys in the project’s location. The outcome of these surveys is then organized in a collection of patterns of inhabitation, which is used to build-up a comprehensive account of the site’s social and spatial practices. The students are then stimulated to critically integrate these vernacular practices in their design hypothesis for an affordable housing complex in Addis Ababa.
Since the course was launched, the students produced more than two dozens of projects for sites in Addis Ababa located in diverse urban conditions: urban renewal of the city center, urban expansion, and rural-urban interface. Drawing on the results of the course Global Housing Graduation Studio, this contribution to the Urban Thinkers Campus – TU Delft 2017 will discuss the extent to which design approaches based on a critical integration of vernacular social and spatial practices are instrumental to promote inclusive and resilient human settlements in the global South.
Darinka Czischke (Chile)
Assistant Professor at TU Delft
Darinka is a housing and urban specialist with over 18 years’ international experience in research, teaching and consultancy across industry, policy and academia. Her work focuses on four thematic fields:
1) ‘UNDERSTANDING HOUSING SYSTEMS’, with a focus on social / affordable housing provision, finance, management and governance, as well as the links between housing and European Union policies.
2) ‘SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, SOCIAL INNOVATION AND CO-PRODUCTION IN HOUSING’, including new models of affordable housing provision and contemporary collaborative housing approaches (e.g. co-housing, Community Land Trusts (CLT), new types of housing co-operatives, etc.)
3) ‘INTEGRATED SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT’, especially socio-spatial integration, urban regeneration, mixed communities and green urbanism.
4) ‘THE URBAN DIMENSION OF THE EU COHESION POLICY 2014-2020’, in particular Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) in urban and urban-rural areas and the implementation of Article 7 of the 2014-2020 ERDF regulations.
Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti (Brazil)
Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the Delft University of Technology. Her intellectual reflection finds its roots in a field research started in 2008 and that lasted four years in the Favelas of Brazil, where she graduated in 2009 in Architecture and Urbanism with a thesis on the favela Sururu di Capote. After her graduation, she continued to research favelas and informal settlements. In 2014 she founded the idea of the School of Favela Architecture, in the Favela do Telegrafo. Her work on Favelas has unfolded exhibitions at UCL Cities Methodologies(London, 2014), Biennial of Public Spaces (Rome, 2015), and University of Waterloo (2016).
In her lecture at the Urban Thinker Campus, Ana Rosa will address social patterns, labor, and new geographies of knowledge in informal settlements, introducing her method “A Favela Pattern Language”, a graphical toolbox inspired and expanding the “Pattern Language” by C. Alexander, to communicate and explore the everyday life in the dwellings and common spaces of slums.
Laura Katharina Straehle (Germany)
Architect at Powerhouse Company / MSc Architecture (TU Delft)
I was born into a multi-generation architecture family in the south of Germany. Although I was fascinated by the creative and exciting work of an architect, I decided to study International Management first and work for a year in this profession before studying architecture at TU Munich. My fascination for having an impact on society even as a student, was triggered by my participation in several Design-Build-Studios at TU Munich which led me to Kenya and Zambia.
My keenness to discover built society around the world made me come to TU Delft where different courses brought me to India, Brasil and once again to Africa. I decided to graduate at Explore Lab, a studio which gives its students the freedom to develop their own fascinations and tasks paving the way for the graduation project I did: Together with a friend, we set up our own Design-Build-Studio and within less than two years, the design and construction phase of a community centre in Kenya was done.
www.laurakatharinastraehle.com / www.pavilions-for-okana.org
Making a difference – Pavilions for a change
The presentation addresses the questions how to teach issues of development at the university, what is missing at TU Delft and what kind of formats we should have with the help of my graduation project. I raise the question ‘what if we stop considering development aid as one-sided and TU Delft starts considering Design & Build – Practice as a unique chance to teach its students towards more responsibility in the whole architectural process. By showing the design process and outcome of the two-year-project Pavilions for Okana I would like to convince the last ones doubting that students are able to do such projects and that TU Delft has more trust in students with a vision and supports them by offering special formats or help with their network.
Stephan van Berkel (The Netherlands)
Lecturer at the Haagse Hogeschool
Stephan van Berkel has two masters, in architecture and urban planning at TU Delft. He worked at several architectural practices, among which Mecanoo and Waterstudio, contributing tot he city App concept. Currently, he works as lecturer and researcher at the Hague University. During his education and work, he has been studying slums in Mumbai, Dhaka and Kampala. He has done in depth research into Bangladeshi garment factories, which have been object of attention after the collapse of Rana Plaza; a garment factory employing 3000 workers. He developed the concept of a ‘Happy Factory’, exploring the extent to which design can or should be user-sourced in order to increase well-being. Currently, he puts efforts to bring the concept of ‘building happiness’ further, together with his students. He explores both the parameters relevant to measure good Architecture / Urban design and how to enable architects an urban planners to use experience-based knowledge in their design process.
Rodrigo Andrés Barrios Salcedo (Colombia)
PhD. candidate, Bauhaus Universität Weimar.
Andrés Barrios (1974, Bogotá), B.A. In Architecture, Universidad de América , (Bogota, Colombia) , M.Sc. Urban Studies, Bauhaus-universität Weimar ( Weimar, Germany), M.Eng Urban Design and Planning, Tongji University Shanghai (People’s Republic of China). I have accumulated experience in the fields of architecture and urbanism for more than ten years now. My topics of interest are situated at the junction of the social, economic and technological processes driving urban spatial production.
Habitat III gives specific importance to the acknowledgement of the ecological function of land; taking into account that such a structural quality sets, in turn, the layout of human settlements, generally speaking. Consequently, fundamental rights related to air quality and safe drinking water access are stressed through the mentioned agreement, so that the chances of having safe and accessible livelihood conditions in the human settlements under formation are ensured.
Spatial planners of the future would have not only to equip themselves with cross-disciplinary, ground-breaking theoretical knowledge, but with alternative methodological approaches in order to structure new sets of narratives that would influence and, in turn, strengthen local and regional human settlements’ governance. As it is assumed that the implementation of the agenda attending the goals set by the 2030 agreement on sustainable development should be linked to such narratives, special attention is paid to the acknowledgement of the possible relationships that are still to be set by humans – and human settlements, consequently- considering the natural milieu and the environment in general.
Nishant Narayan (India)
I am currently pursuing my doctoral studies in the topic of Integrated PV and storage off-grid energy system for low-income households in developing countries. This topic brings together sustainable energy for addressing (energy) poverty woes – the 2 topics close to my heart.
Working towards a sustainable future is my mission. Developing the Solar Energy Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) at TU Delft was a fulfilling experience – more than 90000 students have benefited from the course. My passion for solar energy grew stronger when I realized how students around the world built their own PV systems to power their neighborhoods/villages.
I have completed academic projects on a variety of subjects ranging from Swarm Intelligence to .Control of Distributed (Renewable) Energy Sources. As part of my Masters thesis I worked on the design of a solar powered charging station for Light Electric Vehicles, currently a highly evolving space and an integral component to the future mix of clean energy.
As an independent researcher at TU Delft, I have extensively focused on the design of application specific PV systems. I have also worked on other technologies that will enable and be a part of the future energy mix, like micro-grids, contactless power transfer, and renewables based charging of EVs, among others.
