The symposium is held in Almere city, has no admission fee and is in Dutch. For details and the program of the symposium click on this link to view the invitation.

Order the book online!

For the second time Saline Verhoeven shares  her expertise on the transformation and development of harbor sites in Japan. Today Saline is in Fukuoka kicking-off an expert meeting to identify the strategic planning topics for the Fukuoka metropolitan region. The expert meeting is organized by Stadslab, a European urban design laboratory where professionals and academia exchange knowledge and know-how, while addressing real time cases proposed by the hosting cities.

Another section of the extensive urban design plan, for which Bureau B+B designed the public space, will soon be opened to the public. The city square is the heart of Nieuwegein, a representative space where the entrances to both City Hall and the theatre complex are located. The concept ‘blooming city’ has been translated into the pavement of the public space as a pattern of abstract flowers and branches. This pattern continues without interruption through City Hall and connects the city square with the previously opened shopping square.

Various tree islands, filled with richly flowering trees or ones with intense autumn colours, ensure colourful seasonal shows. The edges of the islands have specially designed seating that invites visitors to sit and relax. The beating heart of Nieuwegein will be returned to the city with the opening of the city square.

Read more about Nieuwegein city centre.

In the last several years, architects and urban designers have been giving more attention to healthcare architecture. The focus has been on the contribution (interior) architecture has made to various forms of healthcare facilities. The variety of articles, books and studies that have appeared have shed insufficient light on the influence of urban configurations and public space. Bureau B+B, together with Studio dVO, art historian Marieke Berkers , choreographer Ann Van den Broek, WArd/waRD and Fiona de Vos, psychologist, are doing research into urban design topologies and the design of public spaces that connect to the daily rhythm of those who move slowly.

The jury report praised the team’s vision.  The project is designed as a landscape ensemble, in which sports fields, playgrounds and a large public park all play integral roles in the design.  The multiplicity of structures, covered playgrounds and exterior spaces collectively create a diverse ‘play and learn landscape’ in which a broad range of activities are possible.

In our search for the logical placement of the sports programme, we became fascinated by the geometric beauty of the different sport fields.  This inspiration lead us to create a chain of fields with an athletic track, football pitch, baseball field and basketball courts, which shapes  the campus’s central open space.   This space is enclosed by the physical bulk of the buildings and the newly-planted trees in order to make the flat geometric shapes of the fields spatial.

The planning for this project is sharp; the preliminary study should be completed by 2012 and the completion of the first buildings is expected in 2015.

For this competition,  the team of Bekkering Adams architects and Bureau B+B worked together with a team of Flemish advisors:  Bureau Bouwtechniek, Antwerp; ABT Antwerp; Ingenium, Bruges and Daidalos/Peutz, Leuven.

The city of Jinzhou is located 430 kilometres north of Beijing in the province of Liaoning and lies 20 kilometres inland. The Jinzhou Longqiwan New Area is an urban development on the coast of the Bonzai Sea. Part of this development is a park, for which Bureau B+B is building a ‘fierljep’ polder and an information centre. This polder-garden will open during the Jinzhou World Landscape Art Exposition in 2013.

A three-meter high dike surrounds the garden and protects the meadows and the system of ditches. The polder is vacant, devoid of views and stands in sharp contrast to the other gardens. But before you know it, the polder becomes a playground. Visitors, fathers, and children use canes to vault over the ditches from one field to another. They experience the euphoria of taking possession of inaccessible land and, by using the canes to transport themselves throughout the garden, follow the more than thousand year old tradition of ‘fierljeppen’. This spectacle can be seen from the dike: how an empty polder is transformed into a playground with leaping and laughing people.

Visitors enter the polder through the information centre. In the centre, they swap their own shoes for rubber boots and an informative film explains how to ‘leap a ditch’. The concrete space, with its alcoves and peepholes, is located in the dike and refers to a fortification. The green-impregnated concrete and caverns, which bring the sunlight into the space, offer visitors an adventure even before they enter the garden. Flower-filled fields of grass lie between the ditches. They differ in colour due to the varied maintenance plan, visitor dynamics, and subtle differences in soil conditions and dampness. The result is a realm of meadow-islands with plants that can be tread on, plants for water and banks, clover and flowers in the grass, all of which changes during the exposition season. Pickings flowers and lying in the grass is permitted. With a hand-made crown of flowers in your hand and splashes of water on your cheek, you say good-bye to the polder.

Last Thursday, we left with John Lonsdale to visit the peat bog colonies. For four days, we took the time to investigate in-depth this region in the northeast of the Netherlands. We explored the countryside, using Hondelhoeve in Eext as our base. Our findings were recorded in photos, films, bog drawings, sketches made using pencil, ink, embroidery and collages made of grasses and bog remnants. We filled plastic bags with peat, heather, sand, water plants and refuse we found to bring back with us to Amsterdam. Photography by: Popel Comou

Fotografie: Renee Klein

Bureau B+B wint i.s.m. Blok Kats van Veen Europese aanbesteding voor Duurzaam Bedieningscentrum Steekterpoort.
De provincie Zuid Holland realiseert op de locatie Steekterpoort in Alphen aan de Rijn het meest duurzame brugbedieningscentrum van Nederland. Een ambitie die niet alleen uitgesproken is maar ook goed vertaald is naar het programma van eisen voor gebouw en terreininrichting. Vanuit het bedieningscentrum zullen straks ruim 25 bruggen in de provincie centraal op afstand bediend gaan worden. Het gebouw maakt onderdeel uit van een ecologisch verantwoord ingericht terrein die een bijzonder publiek karakter heeft. Er wordt ontworpen volgens het Trias Energetica model. Een zo neutraal mogelijke CO2 emissie en een zo laag mogelijk energieverbruik tijdens bouw en bij het gebruik van gebouw en landschap.

Geïnspireerd door een studiereis naar geprefabriceerde woningbouw van ontwikkelaar Joseph Eichler in en rond San Francisco – georganiseerd door projectontwikkelaar Edwin Oostmeijer – ontwikkelden tien bekende Nederlandse architecten, stedenbouwers en landschapsarchitecten, in combinatie met opdrachtgevers, een vrijstaand prefab woonhuis voor de Randstad, waarin de ervaringen uit Amerika zijn verwerkt. Een huis dat we in Nederland niet zo snel zullen vinden…
Tijdens Inside Design Amsterdam presenteren de architecten op IJburg hun ideeën voor een vrije kavel aan een breed publiek door middel van een Pecha Kucha (maximaal 20 dia’s van 20 seconden, dus in totaal 6 minuut 40 per architect).

De volgende architecten presenteren hun ontwerp:
Alexandra Bonazzi – Dil en Bonazzi architecten
Hugo de Clercq – Faro architecten
Floris Cornelisse – Happel Cornelisse Architecten
Jan Griffioen – Griffioen architecten
Piet Grouls – architecten van Mourik
Hans van Heeswijk – Hans van Heeswijk architecten
Daniëlle Huls – Bureau B+B, i.s.m.
Monica Ketting – buroKetting
Annette Marx – Marx & Steketee architecten
Nanne de Ru – Powerhouse Company

Wat: Tien Pecha Kucha’s (korte lezingen) tijdens Inside Design Amsterdam
Waar: IJburgcollege, Theaterzaal, Pampuslaan 1, IJburg, Amsterdam
Wanneer: Zaterdag 24 september 2011, van 12:00 tot 13:30 uur
Meer informatie: www.insidedesign.nl
Toegang: gratis, vrije inloop

“Erfgoed is een steeds belangrijker uitgangspunt bij ruimtelijke ontwikkelingen en een cruciale factor voor ruimtelijke kwaliteit. De betekenis van erfgoed is breed. Zo ontlenen mensen er hun identiteit aan. Mensen voelen zich verbonden met een plek omdat er verhalen aan zijn verbonden. Erfgoed is bovendien een belangrijke inspiratiebron voor nieuwe ruimtelijke ontwikkelingen en het kan bijdragen aan ruimtelijke kwaliteit.”

Op 29 september vindt in de Brakke Grond een debat plaats over dit thema waarbij landschapsplanning in Vlaanderen en Nederland naast elkaar worden geplaatst. Namens Bureau B+B presenteert Mascha Onderwater samen met Rob Zakee van het Projectbureau Hollandse Waterlinie het plan van de Versteende Ridders. Een bijzondere inventarisatie van de betonwerken in de waterlinie en een voorbeeld van hoe het Waterlinie-landschap een nieuw gezicht kan krijgen door creatief met de bunkers in hun omgeving om te gaan.

Via deze link komt u bij het volledige programma.

Saline Verhoeven, landscape architect at Bureau B+B, just came back from a four day workshop in Japan. Saline was invited by Stadslab as a team member of international experts in strategic city development.

Stadslab European Urban Design Laboratory operates as an international think tank and design laboratory for urban design in today’s cities. The expert team formed by Andrew David Fassam (URA, Singapore), John Mader (Lend Lease Japan, Tokyo), Rob van der Bijl (transportation expert, Amsterdam) and Saline Verhoeven defined the strategic agenda for the future development of the city. The team was assisted by Fukuoka Urban Laboratory and local stakeholders. The workshop was the kick-off of a two year program.
Next year three public master classes will be held to study important issues and areas: waterfronts (April 2012), public space (April 2012) and connectivity (October 2012). Master Classes are open for graduated architects, urban designers, landscape architects with a minimum of 2 years experience. Follow updates on www.stadslab.eu

Bureau B+B and B-architecten have won the Open Call competition to create an urban design plan for the area surrounding Turnhout’s station and its adjacent industrial area.

After the Flemish Government Architect’s Open Call, five bureaus were selected to submit a project proposal: Awg architecten, MikeViktorViktor architecten/Grondmij Vlaanderen nv, KCAP, Maat-ontwerpers and Bureau B+B/B-architecten. The proposal of Bureau B+B and B-architecten was chosen by the jury because their project was ‘perfectly’ embedded in Turnhout. The city of Turnhout intends to develop this plan area into an ’Innovatiepool voor Life Science en Global Care’ (Innovation pool for Life Science and Global Care). This not only involves research and innovative projects concerning care and living, but also new integrated residential care concepts and an overall high standard public space.

Bureau B+B and B-architecten asked themselves how far Turnhout’s aspirations could be translated into a distinctive urban design structure, an identity for the ‘Innovatiepool’ and how could ‘Innovatiepool Turnhout’ be formed into a characteristic urban design typology and corresponding public space.

There is a square at the middle of the ‘Innovatiepool’, the central meeting place for the area. This public space is part of a string of urban squares, public gardens, covered galleries, courtyards, streets and paths. Urban functions which will continually vitalize the area, housing, work and social services, are located in the three buildings surrounding the square. Their eye-catching silhouettes refer back to the long history of intense industrial activity that once took place here.

The covered gallery is the urban design typology that guides the paths and routes through the ‘Innovatiepool’. It is a transition between private and public, a covered urban space on the threshold between building and street that connects and also accommodates a myriad of activities: a terrace, a temporary concert hall or simply a place to go enjoy a sandwich during a lunch break. The covered gallery as an identity and means for creating pleasurable public spaces for every dweller, worker and visitor to the ‘Innovatiepool’.

Voor de reeks lezingen in Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond wordt maandelijks een architect van naam uitgenodigd om in een theatrale sfeer te vertellen over zijn of haar werk, ontwerpfilosofie en bronnen van inspiratie. Aanleiding om B+B plaats te laten nemen achter het katheder van ARCAMis de onlangs gewonnen prijsvraag voor het schiereiland Cruquius in Amsterdam met een plan dat volgens de jury ‘op een geheel nieuwe manier stedenbouwkundig ontwerp combineert met strategie, robuuste processen en eenvoudige instrumenten’. Saline Verhoeven, verantwoordelijk voor dit plan, licht tijdens de lezing dit plan en de werkwijze van ons bureau toe.

Kaarten zijn verkrijgbaar in de voorverkoop bij ARCAM, tijdens kantooruren en op zaterdag tussen 13.00 en 17.00 uur of op de avond zelf (indien voorradig!) vanaf 19.30 uur aan de kassa van de Brakke Grond. Reserveren of telefonisch bestellen van kaarten is niet mogelijk.

Aanvang: 20.15 uur (kassa open 19.30 uur)
Voertaal: Nederlands
Locatie: de Brakke Grond, Nes 45
Toegang: € 10,-, studenten € 7,50

Order our bilingual book (English and Dutch) online at Amazon.com using this link.

December 10th we presented our book, “Bureau B + B Urbanism and Landscape Architecture, collective genius 1977 – 2010’. The book is published by NAi Publishers. The presentation took place at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

In the book Bureau B+B Urbanism and Landscape Architecture the bureau is positioned in the extended lines of the discipline and due attention is paid to masters such as Fred Zandvoort and Hans Warnau. What are the bureau’s core qualities and what parallels are there with topical themes in landscape architecture? A generous selection from its 1,500 projects, including the Dutch Pavilion for the World Expo 2000 in Hannover, the Waldpark in Potsdam, the Wollefoppenpark in Rotterdam, Stadsblokken Meinerswijk in Arnhem, all find a place in the book, in essays about topics such as competitions, drafting techniques, the use of plants and visual art.

Through these essays and interviews with people like Riek Bakker, Ank Bleeker, Michael van Gessel and Mascha Onderwater an impression is given of the analytical, interdisciplinary, alienating, craftsmanlike and opinion-shaping qualities of B+B which have ensured that, since 1977, international landscape architecture has been jointly shaped by and within this bureau. The book counts 596 pages and includes essays by Marinke Steenhuis, Esther Darley, Noël van Dooren, Lilli Licka, and Lodewijk Wiegersma.

We thank all people who rated our project at the site of  the “The Western Red Cedar Architectural Design Awards”