Arjan van Timmeren is full professor of the chair Environmental Technology & Design and supervises graduees from MSc Urbanism; MSc Metropolitan Analysis and Design Engineering (MADE) and MSc Industrial Ecology.
Over the years his work has focused on the integration of the concept of sustainable development in the field of architecture, urbanism and building technology in both practice and academia, with lately emphasis on Green-Blue systems (NBS), Urban Resilience, Urban Metabolism (energy-water-food nexus), Circular Economy and Smart cities, and -citizens. He is involved in several building projects in and outside the Netherlands, varying from individual housing and business centers, to large sustainable, circular and even ‘climate neutral’ area developments.
He is specialized in the key aspects of this studio, but dedicates his focus the coming years on:
– Use and Redesign of Public Space for the purpose of sustainability/circularity/resilience; public space is the key-asset of urbanized areas where many claims arise (related to actual use and upcoming challenges with need of space); thus, aspects of focus are curbside management, climate adaptation (UHI, draught/floods, wind), 1,5m society, Nature Based Solutions (NBS).
– Resilience related to essential flows and urban communities; addresses disruptive transitions (climate, energy, mobility, socio-ecological) via a trans-disciplinary, impact-oriented, value-driven style of working, preferably in close collaboration with societal stakeholders.
– Systems thinking and scale related questions focusing at sustainability/circularity/resilience; understanding the system and its sub-systems, optimal scale(s) – top-down/bottom-up, quantitative/qualitative – sensing/modelling (infrastructure, technology, behaviour).
Selection of graduees supervised in the past three years:
– Dieuwertje Wagenaar (2019) ‘Made in Amsterdam: Redeveloping urban waste streams through local production networks for circular textile- and apparel innovation’
– Dirk Verweij (2019) ‘Urban Energy Flow Analysis for transition towards sustainable cities’
– Sabine de Haes (2018) ‘A spatial temporal stock model of copper in Amsterdam 2018-2050’
– Arjang Tajbakhsh (2018) ‘Rise of the factories: understanding the development of textile manufactring in the upper Citarum River basin’
– Lotte Geraerdts (2020/in progress) ‘Redesigning co-creation for Urban Innovation’ (in progress)
– Gijs van Nes (2020/in progress) ‘Towards Sustainable Urban Water Management in the Global South. The case of Mozambique’ (in progress)
– Nadine Schmidt (2020/in progress) ‘Sustainable Area Development. City of The Hague’ (in progress)