The Berlage

What does the city of the future look like? How can we use data collection to design healthy and human-centric environments? What will local and urban food production look like in ten years? This lecture will argue that the digital revolution has brought about many and varied changes to our lives, yet not to the built environment. It will postulate that it is time that we use technology to make our environments more human-centric, safer, more social, and healthier. Ben van Berkel will speculate about “architecture as a service;” the built environment and its digital twin; and presents a number of scenarios that outline how sensor technology, developments in mobility and food production could change our urban regions.

Ben van Berkel is the founder and principal architect of UNStudio, and recently founded UNSense. UNSense is an architectural technology company that designs and integrates human-centered technological solutions into the built environment. He teaches “Health in Architecture” at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and in 2017 gave a TEDx presentation about health and architecture. He is also a member of the taskforce team of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs’s Construction Industry Advisory Board, which is involved in realizing a revolution in the construction industry.