Towards a Healthy City Lab Talk Series #1: The Urban Approach | Public Debate

This lab talk is the first in the Towards a Healthy City series. In collaboration with UNStudio, the complexity of this topic is investigated with a panel of interdisciplinary expertise, knowledge, and insights.

The kick-off event #1 The Urban Approach, examines the built environment as a holistic factor for health production and optimisation. The lab talk aims to take into account implications and challenges of connecting communities, spaces, policies and technology to improve the living conditions and health of citizens and the city.

New angles of collaboration for a future development of healthy cities combines approaches to generate collective (thinking) systems. Developers, city planners, architects, and industry need to create new partnerships, and identify what constitutes the 'appropriate effort' they should contribute to support healthy cities. Designers also need to ask themselves how their designs can incentivize healthier lifestyles. At the same time, it will be important to investigate the ethics of collecting data on user behaviour, and the use of IOT when designing and monitoring these healthy, human-centric environments.

Without using the word 'holistic' or imagining what 'healthy' cities look like, can we design for how cities can make one feel? What they may do for you? What are the outcomes healthy spaces produce, rather than the aesthetic that they reflect? Ultimately, we are interested in exploring research into the production of healthy cities, possiblities of new design and business models, fundamentally re-ordering the priorities of design.

PROGRAMME

Welcome
Hans-Jürgen Commerell, Director, ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Berlin
Dana Behrman, Senior Urban Designer and Head of Urban Unit, UNStudio, Amsterdam

Introduction
Miriam Mlecek, Programme Manager, ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Berlin

Lecture 1
Lenneke Vaandrager, Associate Professor Health and Society, Wageningen University, Wageningen

Lecture 2
Tim Townshend, Professor of Urban Design for Health, Newcastle University

Lecture 3
Jos Boys, Senior Lecturer in Environments for Learning, Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London
 
Lecture 4
Andreas Malich, Developer, Head of International Campus Berlin Branch, Berlin

Podium Discussion

Moderators
Tanja C. Vollmer, Founder, kopvol - architecture and psychology, Berlin and Rotterdam and
Gemma Koppen, Architect, Founder kopvol - architecture and psychology, Berlin and Rotterdam

Peers
Barbara Berninger, Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, Head of the EU and International Division, Head of Metropolis Presidential Office, Berlin
Astrid Piber, Partner and Senior Architect, UNStudio, Amsterdam
Dana Behrman, Senior Urban Designer and Head of Urban Unit, UNStudio, Amsterdam
Martijn Meeske, Direktor, MMEK, Utrecht

The Towards a Healthy City series is part of the ANCB Theme Responsive City: Combining Local Knowledge with Digital Systems.
In collaboration with: UNStudio