At FABRICations we have adopted a comprehensive methodology to design resilient cities for a sustainable future. We offer our clients a range of products that vary in scale and level of development, according to their specific needs.
We have been involving clients and partners in a continuous process of discovery and exploration, offering flexible products that vary in scale and approach.
Regions are a fluid concept, in between the street level and the system scale. Ideally they combine a socio-cultural history, a cross-sector economy and a distinct urban-rural pattern.
Urban design aims to create space to flows of people, knowledge and goods. It creates spaces for people and ideas to meet, and for people to be safe and healthy.
As the world’s population rapidly urbanizes, landscape architecture encompasses the challenge to design resilient urban landscapes and at the same time reduce our footprint on the global landscape.
We develop architectural projects and interiors, with particular attention to spatial experimentation and sustainable strategies. Every building incorporates strategical aspects and forward-looking tectonics, to become an engaging entity in the urban environment.
Our involvement in architecture, urban design and regional strategies leads to a wide range of products. Next to built projects, we also produce publications, do interviews and give lectures to share our work, our ideas and our knowledge.
FABRICations’ knowledge is available for anyone seeking consult about spatial challenges or opportunities. We have a long history of advisory for policy makers, entrepreneurs, investors and private clients.
To tackle social, cultural, ecological and spatial aspects of our projects, we combine a research by design approach with a wide range of tools and products. We select the most appropriate methodology based on the conditions of each project, involving our clients in the process to ensure an effective outcome.
Our Scan provides a comprehensive assessment for sustainable development. Through our six themes, we evaluate challenges, opportunities, program, and site specificities. We apply our tool on three scales: Regional scale, City scale, Building scale. Our study relates to each one, coordinating the information gathered at each level to ensure a full understanding of the conditions in which the project is operating. We involve experts, partners and stakeholders to build a Geographical Information System combining spatial and alphanumeric information. Our interactive system brings together quantitative and qualitative data, to promote an accurate evaluation on all levels. The final outcome of our Sustainability Scan is a 360 degrees preliminary analysis for future development, and a solid base to develop design strategies, planning guidelines and policies.
Our Frame provides key site-specific spatial guidelines and principles for sustainable development. Departing from the information collected in our scan, we assess scenarios and evaluate criteria based on main sustainability certifications. Our range of framing methods varies from simulations to master planning. We adopt artificial intelligence applied to Agent Based Models (ABM) as a smart decision-making tool, to forecast the most effective strategies and the possible outcomes. We develop datasheet to quantify margins and parameters. We develop strategic masterplans to frame optimal scenarios and effective spatial layout.
Our Designs embed all the principles of sustainable urban development within aesthetic and engaging spatial features. They are the ultimate materialization of our healthy urbanism principles, built on the research provided by the Scan, and designed within the guidelines developed with the Frame. The final outcome is a outstanding piece of urban development, a building or a urban plan, designed to be sustainable, healthy, engaging, culturally and socially relevant, with unique spatial identity.
Cities require energy, water and food to function. They are constructed with building materials and have often changed landscape’s natural dynamics. Their economies produce flows of goods, data and money, but also generate waste. Each of these flows involves a chain of places and an infrastructure it uses to move around, often transforming from one type of flow into another. Many of today’s global challenges involve flows, whether it’s reducing waste by making our economies circular or the transition to renewable energy types. The Urban Metabolism Framework helps to better understand how cities work, and how to improve our cities performances.
The Urban Metabolism Framework was developed through projects such as ‘IABR-2014 A New Metabolism for Rotterdam’, ‘Omgevingsvisie Hart van Holland’ and ‘Circular Amsterdam‘.
Our cities need to incorporate 6 essential features to become resilient. They vary from infrastructural and strategical elements, to social and economic catalysts. In every project, the goal of our design is to implement these features in existing urban (eco)systems.
Cities are the motors of our economy. The city is an economic ecosystem, a complex system of which the parts hook into each other: physical space and economic and social processes, spatial systems on various scales, individual actors, companies and institutions. Cities have a large array of economic infrastructures: factories, offices, shops and schools, but also ports, industrial areas, office parks and shopping streets. Our projects offer space to flows of people, knowledge and goods. We believe a vital economy needs to find the right balance between economic prosperity, local value, social inclusiveness and circularity.
Improving healthy living in cities has a long tradition in architecture, urban design and planning: industrialization in the twentieth century started a movement for modernism and garden city planning across the globe. The development of healthy cities of the future requires a new perspective on urban development and on the design of healthy buildings, streets, cities and regions. It is not just about the protection the public health and meeting legal norms, but about an integral approach of the concept of health. It is about programming and organizing urban facilities in such a way that everyone has a healthy living environment and access to healthcare. At FABRICations we aim to stimulate ‘healthy living’, and to improve air-, water- and soil qualities. Our projects encourage a healthy lifestyle by creating proximity and pleasant spaces that encourage meeting, discourage antisocial behavior and counter social exclusion and loneliness.
FABRICations works on projects that contribute to a vibrant, inclusive city with involved residents and enterprising citizens, where old and new ages overlap with each other in a recognizable way, with room for new developments and reuse of buildings and spaces. City planners have always been concerned with the social and cultural aspects of the build environment. But urban planners and engineers tended to ignore the people ‘making’ the city: those who create their own playing field, develop new investment models, make new social connections, and step off the beaten track. That is why we at FABRICations don’t believe in an engineered society, in blueprints or masterplans. We always aims to connect bottom-up initiatives and desires to top-down agendas and challenges. Our researches and our designs contribute to making cities by offering spatial perspectives and by scaling up ideas.
Climate change, population growth, economic fluctuations, pandemics, terrorism and bordercrossing polution increase the pressure on our metropolitan landscapes and urban infrastructures. FABRICations works on projects that create resilient landscapes. Resilience is the capacity of systems to adapt to changing circumstances or disruptions. Our designs adept energy systems to renewable sources, sewage systems to heavier rain showers and connected economies to faster online networks. We combine coast safety measures with economical development, design landscapes that retain fresh water to prevent drought and salination, and transit oriented development that connects several transport modalities at once.
Our economy is linear and urban regions are the end point: food, energy and materials are imported from far across the borders, are consumed here and in the end mostly downcycled and wasted. The increasing world population and the rising welfare level are rapidly exhausting global resources. For some raw materials the end of supplies is already near. Especially in Europe this is a geopolitical challenge, because the old continent is an economic world player with an enormous consumption footprint and at the same time very small natural supplies. Our role as designers is not limited to the building chain. Other flows and economical chains also involve valuable materials and resources. There’s a role for design on each scale – from creating a reusable building, to investigating potential for local exchange.
Cities worldwide are responsible for 70 percent of the global energy use and 40 to 70 percent of CO2 emissions. The way cities are designed and planned is crucial for their energy use. FABRICations works on dense compact cities, public transport based development, cycling infrastructure – to establish cities with a lower energy use per capita. We promote energy exchange between industries, food production, housing and public facilities and combine exchange networks with other smart infrastructure projects. The transition from an almost invisible fossil energy system to a system using renewable energy sources puts a vast claim on the metropolitan landscape. Our integral planning and design approach not only aims to implement sustainable energy, but to use the energy transition to create better cities.
