2022 – Design Project P3: Double Plus Good
This year’s design course is Guaranteed Overshoot Free. It deals with this planetary claim as a series of spatial interventions from the Dutch perspective of ‘maakbaarheid’ (makeability). Turning our human impact of the Anthropocene into a positive force, you will design a district that has its Earth Overshoot Day exactly then, when it should be: on December 31st. Given the status of a pilot development of larger future urban context, the design will combine the spatial claims for the entire district housing, work, production and recreation, but also for energy, food, carbon absorption and other spatial claims within the given area.
2021 – Design Project P3: Altruism – How will we live together?
In this design studio you will design a district as part a larger context and you will keep it in balance by taking care of the area around it in an altruistic way. You will look at
the surroundings of the given area as an interconnected (eco)system. What is an appropriate addition to ensure the sustainable development of your district and its surroundings? We look at a future situation in 2050. The period of the next 30 years is long enough for radical (r)evolution, e.g. transform the entire existing housing stock, grow a forest or succeed with climate adaptation. You will come up with a design that serves your plot and a defined ‘other’. At the end of this course, you will have developed a design that is both, outspoken and an integral part of an interwoven solution for a wider area. The program for your site is defined in twofold: by the site itself, and by the its altruistic significance for the ‘other’
2020 – Design Project P3: Designing an Urban Ecosystem
From September 2020 onwards Mathias will teach architecture, landscape and urbanism students at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam. His course – P3 AUL ‘District’ – will focus on an urban plan for the Central Market Area in Amsterdam that is designed as an urban ecosystem delivering free ecosystem services and resulting in high density, and at the same time high quality of life. Mathias is part of the urbanism team, headed by MLA+ director Markus Appenzeller. Students design a vivid and attractive metropolitan ecosystem for people, animals and plants – a blue print for a future, nature-inclusive city district on the given while profiting from successful references drafted realized in Amsterdam, and the vision set out in the recently published Deltaplan Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Groenvisie 2050.
2019 – Design Project P3: Designing the Next City
In autumn of 2019 Mathias teaches for the first time at the Department of Urbanism of the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, headed by Markus Appenzeller. The design course given by Mathias is P3 (AUL) that focuses on the design of a new neighbourhood on the current industrial site of the Nieuwendammerham island, a peninsula North of the IJ and South of Vliegenbos forest. The approach of the project is to look at the design of a new district as if it were an urban ecosystem, tackling metropolitan challenges by the functional use of ecosystem service. Image by student Augusto Rodrigues, who focused on food and energy.
2018 – Design Course P2: The Rough Strip.
In this studio you will make a design for the strip between Naritaweg and the train tracks. The project area is a strip of 150 m wide and almost 1.200m long which is characterized by a series of generic solitary office buildings with as an exception an indoor climbing centre. The Rough Strip is a perfect location to elaborate this phenomenom of alienation and longing and explore the roughness of urban subcultures, the behavior of predators and the meaning of ‘place’ and ‘home’. Let’s engage with another form of urban reality that is not part of the slick sales folders for condos that might promise carefree urban living to the new Amsterdam yuppies that will settle in the better version of Sloterdijk over a couple of years.
2017 – Design Project P5: Cornucopia
From September 2017, Mathias Lehner, together with Yttje Feddes and Vincent Kompier, will be teaching the P5 at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam situated on a new island next to Amsterdam. For students of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, this design assignment of 12 weeks focuses on a part of the city of the future: the Strandeiland IJburg. This concerns circularity, energy production, density and biodiversity. Together they ensure an unprecedented high Quality of Life in the city. During the lesson, students can view information below and download study material & maps.
2016 – Design Project P1: Feel Good
Develop a high-profile, visually appealing and communicative landscape / architectural design that introduces the notion of biodiversity as a carrier for a higher Quality of Urban Life. Your design makes humans (and other species of your choice) feel good. You crisply and powerfully introduce the value of biodiversity into people’s minds and the given location. Your design radiates optimism, surprises and shows that nature and city go very well together and have benefits for inhabitants and passer-bys. Your design is intended to be a so-called ‘lighthouse project’. The result is inspiring and works as a trigger for subsequent projects on the location and in the neighborhood. It is a first step to consciously foster more biodiversity to the city.
2015 – Design Course P1: Feel Good
This assignment is siatuated in New West, the area in the west of Amsterdam, which was built after World War II. The foundation was laid for this in the General Extension Plan (Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan) in 1935. The neighborhoods have a no closed building blocks and lots of greenery between the buildings. The assignment of this course comprises the design of a high-profile, visually appealing and communicative (landscape) design that introduces the topic “Biodiversity in the City“ crisply and powerfully into people’s minds. Your design radiates optimism, surprises and shows that nature and city go very well together and have benefits for residents.
2014 – Design Project P1: ‘Man and Beast’
At the beginning of 2014, Mathias Lehner, together with his junior co-teacher Thijs de Zeeuw, teaches the design project ‘Man’ to the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Within the professional specialization of landscape architecture, this design assignment focuses on involving residents and other users of the public space. The location is located around the restaurant Baut on the Wibautstraat.
2012 – Design project P2: ‘Human Being’
In the spring of 2012, Mathias Lehner teaches at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Within the landscape architecture specialization, he teaches the course P2a ‘people’, a design assignment with a focus on involving residents and other users of public space. The design assignment concerns rural public space. About landscape, the village and people, and the relationship between these three. The flat land is idealized. People rave about it. Everyone wants to live outside. There are spatial differences between an urban and a rural location in context, scale and layout. But the human aspect also differs. In the village there is a smaller number of (potential) users and a different method of use. There are differences in tempo, habitus and – contemporary or traditional – spatial ritual.
2011 – Design Project P2: ‘Human Being’
In the spring of 2011, Mathias Lehner teaches at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Within the landscape architecture specialization, he teaches the course P2a ‘people’, a design assignment with a focus on involving residents and other users of public space. The design assignment is about landscape in the city and people, and the relationship between these three. Landscape in the urban context is often emptiness. Endowed with various meanings, the concept of this space is usually the opposite of ‘city’. If landscape were to be equated with nature, then urban landscape is only ‘residual nature’. Yet landscape space is often used as a counterpoint or compensation for the city with the aim of greenery, recreation and meeting. In practice, this does not always work out well. Often there is an excess of space that has to pass as landscape in the city. Within the assignment P2a Human, we go back to the essence of landscape in the city with the underlying proposition that less landscaped space can actually mean more landscape enjoyment.
2010
Design Project P2
In spring of 2010, Mathias Lehner taught at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. Within the landscape architecture specialization, he taught the course P2a ‘people’, a design assignment with a focus on involving residents and other users of public space. The location for the designs was the Red Light District of Amsterdam’s medieval center, which is currently part of a major urban renewal project. The Design Bus was used during the lessons, see www.ontwerpbus.nl.