HANS VAN DER HEIJDEN ARCHITECTEN, HET BUREAU VOOR DUURZAAM STADSONTWERP BV

Sustainability is hot. What exactly is sustainability? And what can architects contribute? What knowledge and skills do architects need if sustainability is to be understood more broadly than a purely technical task? Can sustainability be viewed practically and soberly?

In any case, economy, reuse, and design for the long term are nothing new. We learn from history.

HvdHA starts at the beginning. We start from materials, structures and construction methods that are available locally. We limit transport, demolition, and maintenance. We avoid experiments with associated failure costs. We propose materials that stand the test of time.

We value manual labour over machine production.

HvdHA designs for the long term. We use the typology of architecture to design changeable buildings.

The office focuses on the conventions of living and working. We anchor buildings in living. HvdHA puts urban continuity above experimentation. We design for the European city, which slowly adapts to new conditions.

We use 30 years experience with urban renewal and renovation projects. Hans’s work as Professor of Sustainable Urban Design at Cambridge Univerasity and his book Architecture in the Fractured City adds knowledge to that.

Hans van der Heijden, Jeffrey Reule, Harmen van der Wilt

Hans (the Hague, NL, 1963) grew up in the post-war Prinsenhof in Leidschendam as the son of an architectural technician and the grandson of a furniture maker. He studied architecture and urban design at TH Delft, where he further developed the interest in building that he had inherited from his family.

Hans specialised in housing design and was one of the first students to graduate in 1988 with a densification proposal for the post-war Mariahoeve housing estate in The Hague. During his studies, Hans worked at Mecanoo to contribute to the firm’s first generation of large-scale housing projects.

Hans specialised in housing design and in 1988, he was one of the first students to graduate on a densification proposal for the post-war Mariahoeve district in The Hague. During his studies, Hans worked at Mecanoo on the firm’s first large-scale housing projects. In 1994, he founded the office biq stadsontwerp with Rick Wessels. In 1996, he received the international Europan Prize for a design for the restructuring of a post-war residential ensemble in Liverpool.

After leaving biq stadsontwerp in 2014, Hans has been working under his own name in Amsterdam and participated in the manifestation WerkBundStadt Berlin. In addition, Hans holds a part-time professorship in architectural design at Antwerp University and he is a member of the Gestaltungsrat in Potsdam.

Hans van der Heijden has a portfolio of housing, urban design, re-use, cultural buildings and research. His award-winning designs include the renewal of Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool and the urban renewal at Hessenberg and in Lakerlopen. The NRC journalist Bernard Hulsman named the social housing dat the Rotterdam Persoonshaven the most significant architectural design of 2020.