U&L WEEK 2025
November 5 - 6
context
This year’s overarching theme is 'Designing Under Pressure', which frames our conversations around the societal, climatic, political, and economic forces shaping landscapes today. Within this, our sub-theme 'Agency Under Pressure' calls attention to the many actors and agents of change operating in the urban realm. We invite speakers and voices from varied contexts to share how their work, whether formal or informal, local or global, is responding to these pressures and actively reimagining the spaces we inhabit.
topic
Landscapes do not look the same everywhere, and societies do not live the same realities. Each part of the world faces its own combination of pressures; social, climatic, political, economic. Urbanism, landscape design, and architecture sit at the heart of this tension. They are fields of struggle shaped by their context. They shift across time, scale, and geography, and it is this constant variation that defines how we respond to the challenges of our age. And the responses themselves are as varied as the conditions that give rise to them. The diversity of responses reveals a wide spectrum of actors and agents of change working from different positions but influencing our collective landscape. These actors emerge not only from formal institutions like government, academia and professional practices but also from communities, informal networks, activists, and individuals who act outside formal structures.
This Urban Landscape Week is about bringing diverse voices into focus. It is about celebrating the multiplicity of approaches, the unlikely collaborations, and the inventive ways in which people are reshaping urban and spatial realities across the world.
live stream!
If you can't be there, you can follow the livestream on our YouTube Channel. Just check out the 'Live' tab and you should see the streaming once the event starts. If you have questions or comments, don't be shy: feel free to use the live chat!
DAY 1
Wednesday Nov. 5th
09:00 - 9:30
09:30 - 10:10
10:10 - 10:30
10:30 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:30
12:30 - 13:15
13:15 - 14:30
14:30 - 15:30
15:30 - 16:30
16:30 - 17:00
Slow welcoming session with morning coffee
Positioning workshop 'Where do you stand'?
Announcement of the results of the UL Challenge
First session - Talk with Rahul from Urbz
Second session - Talk with Maria Giulia Cantaluppi and Isabella Inti from Temporisuo
Lunch break
'Small talk' workshop
- participants will join conversations based on given topics:
Third session - Talk with Gergana Ilieva from the Collective
PEP Talk, organized by Eric Luiten, Professor Landscape Architecture
Closing session
DAY 2
Thursday Nov. 6th
Slow welcoming session with morning coffee
Session with Victor Muñoz Sanz and Robbert Jan Van Der Veen
with Lecture, Workshop (advices for the young designers), and Reflection
Long Lunch Break
Q1 Exhibition and visit from the Municipality
Closing Borrel (drinks and small snacks provided)
09:00 - 09:30
09:30 - 12:00
12:00 - 15:30
15:30 - 17:00
17:00
Program
Talks
We are exploring how spatial, social, and environmental impact can extend beyond design through multidisciplinary initiatives and approaches — and how creative collaboration and co-creation can become powerful tools of landscape transformation.
The guest contributions will address experiences of working within challenging and often resistant contexts — examining ways to confront issues of neglect, mismanagement, contamination, and debilitating design. They will highlight how to build meaningful collaborations with stakeholders and actors, and how to initiate and sustain projects at local, municipal, and national scales.
This conversation invites students to engage with urbanism and landscape beyond academia and conventional practice, revealing a diverse set of tools through which meaningful and lasting change can emerge.
Speakers
Rahul Srivastava
Co-founder of URBZ and the Institute of Urbanology, he brings his background in anthropology and visual ethnography to the practice of participatory urbanism, design, and governance.
Maria Giulia Cantaluppi
founder of Temporiuso office, focused on Urban reuse, sociocultural hybrid spaces, radical mapping
Gergana Ilieva
Architect and member of The Collective, a foundation uniting citizens, experts, and institutions to transform neglected urban spaces across Bulgaria into vibrant, inclusive public places.
Víctor Muñoz Sanz
Assistant Professor of Urban Design at TU Delft, focused on examining the design and socio-spatial implications of the past, present and future of work
Robbert Jan Van Der Veen
Urban designer and partner at Echo
Workshops
Together, we will talk about a set of topics that are central to the fields of spatial practices. Throughout this process, we will reflect on our role and position within the future of these professions—considering the challenges we face, the values that guide our work, and the impact we aim to create.
This exploration encourages us to connect theory with practice, address current social and environmental challenges, and identify shared patterns in problems, obstacles, and solutions. Throughout the process, we will lead you through exercises designed to trigger new spatial imaginaries and push you to think differently about design.
PEP Talk
We will be addressing the post-graduate trajectory known as the Professional Experience Program (PEP). This program offers a two-year, part-time curriculum designed to run alongside your professional work as a junior designer. Completing the PEP is a prerequisite for registration in the Dutch Architecture Register, qualifying you to become an officially recognized landscape architect or urban designer.
The presentation will feature two representatives from the Bureau Architectenregister, and a TU Delft alumni who has recently completed the program and will share personal experiences and insights.
ABOUT
URBANISM & LANDSCAPE WEEK
The UL week sees a series of curated lectures, seminars, workshops and debates which revolve around a particular theme in an attempt to understand routes, practices and issues of contemporary urbanism while trying to find its future possibilities. The goal of the UL Week is to bring together people interested in future development of urban landscapes and the built environment together and provide a platform for discussion from creative and technical practices. Each year the UL Week formulated a theme based on current or controversial discussions about the built environment by consulting different professional and students. This theme is the guiding factor around which all the events are positioned.
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