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NEW ENVIRONMENTS is an urban design agency from Amsterdam. We use design to improve wellbeing by shaping a dynamic relationship between humans and the environment.

Climate change, population growth, and globalisation are compromising the finite resources that the planet provides. New environments need to cater for a growing number of services and navigate the needs of human, floral, and faunal stakeholders. The agency embraces this complexity and promotes a new systemic integrality in the planning profession. We design symbiotic environments, curate transformative processes, and develop realisable futures.

We are passionate about exploring speculative futures as a research-driven design exercise, delving into both utopian and dystopian scenarios to communicate underlying values and critiques within the built environment.

We are currently very interested in metabolic processes and the intricate relationship between urbanism, ecology and biology, an intersection that allows for experimentation and a much needed shift in perspective. Consequently we are also searching for an aesthetic that embraces natural metabolisms, including often-overlooked aspects such as decay and death. This perspective challenges conventional notions of beauty and encourages a more holistic understanding of natural systems.

We are looking forward to the incredible network of expertise we will have access to, which includes some of our icons in the field, as an invaluable resource for informing our research. Connecting with such talented people, to share ideas and visions and to hopefully build a collaborative relationship with. We are especially excited to work crossdisciplinary with theatre and poetry, to leave the field of classical urbanism and explore new ways of conveying our message. Also, we wish to put NEW ENVIRONMENTS on the map as a progressive research & design agency.

The Port of Amsterdam is for us a manifestation of globalization and its accompanying dynamics and challenges. These challenges include pollution, waste, global trade, geopolitics, forced labor, and global segregation. The port’s hyper-dynamic environment makes it an ideal location for prototyping and testing innovative solutions. The challenge will be for us to find some sort of a human scale access to the hyper artificial and somewhat abstract construct a port has become.

We are very fascinated with the idea of degrowth and its translation into urban design. For now we think it’s about inventing new currencies of success that are based not on quantitative but qualitative indicators. Degrowth thinks about reducing our consumption and resource footprint. Rather than fearing a decrease in material wealth, we believe that this can come with a much higher quality of life if you shift the parameters of monetary value to emotional values like social cohesion, psychological health or thriving ecosystems.

Utter confusion at first which is slowly taken over by curiosity and anticipation to do something really experimental within our field. After reading Lisa’s book “Apocalypsofie”, things became actually much clearer as the thesis she builds is quite pragmatic. As of now, we believe it is about a shift in perspective and very much a cultural question – if we survive as a species – rather than a technological one. This is also the direction we want the design to take.

In general: pessimism is a waste of time. We approach every task with a strong base-optimism and the belief in human kindness. Genetically we are very close to our pre- neolithic hunter and gatherer tribes, where war and possession were not invented yet, but collaboration and social cohesion was imperative to survival. We are programmed to help each other out and we think that we are not that far from reinventing these characteristics if we overcome materialistic nonsense.