After years of experience in education, research, design and policy, Professor Marcel Smets, former Flemish Government Architect, compiles his insights on the city and urban design in a personal booklet.

In his search for the foundations of urban design, Marcel Smets puts forward thirty complementary pairs of concepts. He starts from archetypal settlement forms (ribbon and cluster, ladder and star), typifies morphological categories (street and road, island and archipelago) and highlights ch...

Residential architecture and landscape design projects in the USA desert states, highlighting unique design challenges and opportunities.

Waking up to the idea of a post-growth society, Rotterdam Ripresa presents a city that aims to amend instead of renew, accepting not just the pleasant past, but also the impudent present. To find the new in the old may well be the most sustainable thing of all. Can a city change while remaining the same?

Rotterdam Ripresa adopts an alternative method towards the production of new visions for the city. An urbanism of fragmentary intervention as a cadavre exquis where authorship is deluded rath...

The theme of the Prix de Rome Architecture 2022 is Healing Sites. At a time when labour inequality and climate issues have resulted in a demand for change, this edition of the Prix de Rome Architecture calls to rethink and redesign spatial practices. Architecture has been complicit in establishing the ecocidal legacies of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. How can architects, urbanists, and landscape architects reflect upon and rearticulate their working methods in order to undo these ...

Since 1890, the Royal Museum of FIne Arts in Antwerp has been home to a rich collection spanning over seven centuries of art history; from the Flemish Primitives to Expressionists. More recently, the Museum has been enriched by another treasure by the Dutch architectural firm KAAN Architecten. Their restoration work and new design combine a contemporary allure with the glorious but somewhat neglected beauty of the 19th-century landmark. Completely conceiled within the existing museum, the new...

Located in the up-and-coming Zuidas district, the new Amsterdam Courthouse exudes approachable authority adhering to the principle that the judicial process is a public matter.

KAAN Architecten designed the stately yet inviting institution for public discourse through a collaborative DBFMO* contract overseeing the building's funding, construction, maintenance, and property management.

The Courthouse: Public Architecture is entirely produced and compiled by the building's architects. Through o...

The energy transition is in full swing. Worldwide, windmills and solar panels are taking over from fossil fuels. The construction of these new energy landscapes is often met with resistance. What if this is not about energy technologies, but about the drastic change of our immediate living environment, the places where we live, work and recreate?

The Power of Landscape examines various energy landscapes in Europe and the US in the present, past and future, based on the qualitative and emotion...

The practice of architecture manifests in myriad forms and engagements. Overcoming false divides, this volume frames the fertile relationship between the cultural and scholarly production of academia and the process of designing and building in the material world. It proposes the concept of the hybrid practitioner, who bridges the gap between academia and practice by considering how different aspects of architectural practice, theory, and history intersect, opening up a fascinating array of p...