People

Chair Delta Urbanism – Department of Urbanism
Prof. Chris Zevenbergen

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From February 2021 Chris Zevenbergen is professor (part-time 0.2fte) Delta Urbanism. Zevenbergen has a background in ecology and earth sciences and over 25 years of international experience in water-sensitive urban issues and urban flood risk management.

Chris Zevenbergen (1958) is professor at the Water Engineering Department of IHE Delft and at TuDelft, The Netherlands. He is also a visiting professor at the Southeast University (SEU) and at the North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power (NCWU). He was a Member of the Board of the Public Private Innovation Platform Clean Tech Delta, The Netherlands in 2013 and 2014 and of the Netherlands Partnership (NWP) from 2010 to 2013). He is now chairman of the Academic Board of the MSc program River Delta Development of three Applied Universities in The Netherlands, and project director of DeltaCAP, a Dutch funded program on capacity development to support the implementation of the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. He worked as a researcher on various environmental issues related to the building industry, such as environmental impact assessments, product development, emission modeling, testing procedures, building codes and guidelines in the 1980s followed by 20 years international research and consultancy in environmental engineering and water management of urban systems. In the past 15 years he has accumulated extensive national and international experience with integrated approaches to manage floods in urban environments. His research interest is specifically on innovative concepts to mitigate urban flood impacts, on flood proofing building designs and technologies and on decision support tool development in urban planning with practical application in urban flood management and climate adaptation. He has a strong affinity with the ecological, socio-economic, institutional aspects of urban planning and water management. Therefore, he considers himself more a generalist than a specialist. He has published/edited five books and more than 120 scientific publications in the field of environmental engineering and urban flood management. He was co-founder and chairman of the European Network COST C22 on Urban Flood Management. He chairs the Flood Resilience Group (FRG) of IHE Delft. He participates in various national and international advisory boards of governmental and scientific institutions (e.g. IPCC EM Infra, Rotterdam Climate Proof, Environmental Science Group Wageningen, iBuild, DLR Future Mega Cities, EPSRC, Delta Alliance, Dutch Delta Plan, Room for the River program).

Dr. Steffen Nijhuis, Associate Professor
Head of Landscape Architecture Research, Director European Post-master in Urbanism (EMU) and Associate Professor Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology.

Dr.ir. Inge Bobbink, Associate Professor at the Section Landscape Architecture,
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology.

Inge Bobbink focuses on landscape architectonic design with a particular interest in the relation between water and land, including flora, fauna, and people. In her work, she explicitly stresses the importance of form and composition as an expression of culture and identity. Four perspectives on the analysis and design of (urban)water landscapes form the backbone of the research: (urban)landscape perception, (urban)landscape as a palimpsest, (urban)landscape as scale continuum and (urban)landscape as an ecological, economic and social process. She develops research methods to analyse traditional water systems and elements that are deeply rooted in the landscape and linked to human activities, focussing on its circularity and beauty. The results of this research form a theory that helps to transform today’s water systems into circular (integral, sustainable) water systems — an inclusive, tangible space for all.

Dr. Diego Sepulveda-Carmona is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Spatial Planning and Strategy in the Department of Urbanism, he is currently the Urbanism Lab master coordinator and senior researcher at Complex City Regions and Delta Urbanism research groups at the  Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology.

His research interests are related to the links of regional development and climate change at the implementation of adaptation processes. Diego is specialized in regional development with experiences on infrastructural development and socio-spatial, socio-environmental integration with special interest into fast transformative economies and the integration of the changing social dynamics. The emphasis is on the planning strategies and design under the dynamic interrelation between planning, spatial structures and natural systems. His particular interest in regional development is on the complex conditions for integration of the local levels on the Metropolization processes. He is focus on the strategic alignment between local, urban and metropolitan governance bodies. Lately His work is defined on how to integrate and deploy the climate change adaptation processes and mitigation strategies within a regional developing context.

Dr. Nikki Brand is a Interdisciplinary Scientist at Strategic Development Delft University of Technology.

Her work departs from the observation that the global need for flood resilience is driven by two forces: climate change and a concentration trend in the urbanization process. Although the clash between both is a real concern, the dynamic urbanization process itself is also an opportunity to push for flood resilient development. This, however, requires a coordinated response: often at the regional scale that tends to be governed in a fragmented manner, and from parties that govern different components of the urban fabric that are not aware of their potential contribution. Such a response can only be established from a system’s perspective that identifies cities’ particularities and latent strengths, that can be linked to a diverse set of integrated design responses from spatial designers and civil engineers alike. Nikki’s core academic discipline is urban planning with spatial design, flood risk management and public administration as secondary fields of expertise. She welcomes excellent students that aim to identify strategic leverage for flood resilient development of urban regions in both centralized and decentralized governance systems.

Dr. Baukje (Bee) Kothuis is a postdoc at the department of Hydraulic Engineering, faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences, TU Delft; and an independent consultant at BBE Waterworks, Amsterdam.

Baukje Kothuis is a design anthropologist studying integrated and sustainable design of flood risk reduction structures and strategies. Focusing on (methods for) stakeholder inclusive design and multidisciplinary knowledge integration in delta design and research projects. Facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, exposure of innovative education and research, contacts with (international) business and industry, and research collaboration and educational exchange between TU Delft faculties BK, CiTG and TBM and Universities in the USA, mainly around the Gulf of Mexico (Houston/Galveston, TX; New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA; Jackson, Mississippi). Involved in NWO projects ‘Integral and Sustainable Design of Multifunctional Flood Defenses’ and ‘Integral and Sustainable Design of Ports in an African Context – Ghana’. Dutch coordinator and co-PI the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for International Research and Education (NSF-PIRE) program at Texas A&M University, Texas. For BBE Waterworks developing and producing (book)publications, workshops, symposia, conferences, and other events and activities related to delta design, water governance and flood risk research.

Luisa Maria Calabrese is an architect, urban designer and curator. Over the years she has developed a hybrid practice that takes the transformation of the urban as its object. She has practiced professionally in urban design and architecture, as well as in more cross-disciplinary forms of research and design. Her work is characterized by an inquisitive trajectory with cross-disciplinary & artistic research at its core. Her interest in cross-disciplinary & artistic research and new media, led her to join the Make Move Think Foundation. As an educator she has over 20 years of experience in mentoring graduation projects. Her recent work focusses on the critical role (urban) design can play in constructing a post-anthropocentric vision of the world we inhabit. The urgencies of the present time ask for a revision–if not a revolution–of our way of looking at and operating on fragile territories, ecologies and subjects. Moving beyond the dichotomy between human habitat and other ecosystems, the main question is how to re-anchor (urban) design as an inclusive material practice that matters. The spatial narrative approach is one line of research she is particularly interested in. The narrative approach is characterized by multiplicity, meaning that the reading of the territory as a post-anthropocentric project seeks to detect more than one story, more than one voice. By exploring the transformations of an area through the multiple narratives of which it is made of, the dynamic spatio-temporal relationships among spatial systems, environment, society, culture, economy and politics emerge and inform the Urban Design project. The systematical unveiling of narrative layers–more than disentangling lines–is based on an actualization of crossdisciplinary analytical and representational approaches. This multi-focus framework offers a solid basis to explore and unfold more specific research and (urban) design projects, depending on their spatial, environmental and sociocultural contexts.

Dr. Marcin Dąbrowski is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Spatial Planning and Strategy in the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology.

His research interests span across many topics related to governance of territory, from regional strategies for circular economy, or energy transition, to governance of urban climate change adaptation policies and the nexus between flood risk management and spatial planning. Marcin’s research seeks to broaden our understanding of how the institutional, cultural and economic contexts in which cities operate shape their capacity to adapt to climate change and promote spanning horizontal, vertical and temporal boundaries for addressing the growing flood risk. In this work, he focuses on the Dutch and Chinese delta cities (Pearl River Delta).

Nikos is an architect and urbanist working at the intersection of urbanization theory, design and geospatial analysis. He holds a Doctor of Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). His research seeks, through conceptual and cartographic experiment tion, to contribute to a geographical understanding of the socio-metabolic relations between agglomerations and their operational landscapes. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Urbanism Department, TU Delft, and Researcher at Urban Theory Lab, University of Chicago. Previously he was Research Tutor at the Royal College of Arts, London, where he collaborated in developing a new research program on Environmental Architecture, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg, where he worked on the establishment of a new Master on Architecture, European Urbanization and Globalization. At the GSD he has also served as Instructor in Urban Planning and Design (2014-2015), Teaching and Research Associate (2010-2014). Between 2012-216 he was on the editorial board of the New Geographies journal and co-editor of New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism (Harvard University Press, 2014). He has worked as Teaching Fellow and Research Associate at the GSD and the National Technical University Athens and has taught workshops at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. He is a licensed architect in Greece (2006) and has practiced urban design as an individual, and as an associate architect (2006-2009). He holds a professional degree in Architectural Engineering with highest distinction (2006) and a Master of Science in Architecture and Spatial Design (2009) from the National Technical University of Athens. His research is supported by grants and scholarships from the Fulbright foundation, the A.S. Onassis foundation, the A.G. Leventis foundation, the Real Estate Academic Initiative, the Milton Fund and the Graham Foundation for the Arts.

Claudiu Forgaci is an assistant professor of urban design at TU Delft, engaged in understanding how urbanisation patterns, at multiple spatial and temporal scales, are related to the resilience of urban landscapes to social, technical, and environmental disturbances. In his research, teaching and practice, he combines urban design and planning, landscape architecture and architecture, as well as spatial-temporal data science and mixed methodologies, in a cross-scalar, design- and data-drivenapproach to urbanism. He develops methods, techniques, and instruments for the spatial assessment, planning and design of urban space, as well as spatial applications of green and blue infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and other spatial applications of urban resilience. In his recent work, he has developed principles and instruments for the design of social-ecologically integrated riverside urban spaces. He works closely with professionals and academics from several disciplines, and strives to engage students and citizens in co-design processes, with the ambition of developing an effective transdisciplinary practice of urban design and resilience.