Today designers and policy makers are facing urban challenges that cannot be solved by thinking traditonally in only local, punctual or linear interventions. Causes and effects, architecture and the environment but also humans, plants and animals are interrelated. These relations can be approached afresh with system thinking.

Applying this thinking Mathias Lehner of nextcity taught a design course at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam with inspiring results. The tasks for the Master Students of Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism was not only to design a new neighbourhood on a given location, but to design it with a systematic approach that took into account stakeholders. Moreover it included time: What happens in between the design phase and a future re-use of the realized project?

The students focused either on energy, food, water or an other dimension of their interest. See above Vyasa Koe’s work that integrates local fish breeding in the urban plan and below Augusto Rodrigues’ design that focuses on the changing energy system of the new neighbourhood.