Lydia works as Program Developer in the Urban Energy Program at AMS Institute. She is passionate about cities and their future through the perspectives of urban design, architecture, and resilience. Her particular interest lies in transforming cities to be resilient and sustainable through systems thinking, integrated design, urban data, technology, and innovation. Her role involves exploring, initiating, and developing projects that connect energy with its spatial dimension in the city and create synergies between urban challenges and different actors, addressing the challenges cities and citizens face in transitioning to a sustainable energy future.
With a background in architecture, Lydia loves exploring how to connect the complex world of energy systems and infrastructure and their unseen spatial dimension with the even more complex urban environment of cities. She is committed to developing integral strategies and methods that can help transform our urban environments and their energy systems to be more sustainable, affordable, while keeping the city beautiful, appealing, meaningful and a pleasant environment offering a high quality of life for people.
Before joining AMS Institute, Lydia completed her MSc in Architecture at TU Delft, with her thesis “The Shared Platform: Cohabitation and sharing on the IJ” a floating community building in Coenhaven in Amsterdam that was inspired by the AMS Roboat project and the future water mobility network developed in the context of Amsterdam 2050. She has worked as an architect at Mecanoo Architecten in Delft, on big-scale residential developments in Amsterdam, visions, and design proposals on the topic of mobility and the future of sustainable train stations and in renovation projects. Simultaneously, she has worked as a design tutor at TU Delft in courses related to innovations for the city focusing on sustainable mobility challenges.
Lydia sees AMS Institute as a unique environment with a very special energy; an ecosystem consisting of a dynamic, ambitious, and multicultural team passionate about tackling urban challenges, connecting technical innovation with societal implementation.
“AMS Institute holds a strategic position between research, inno-vation, education, and the city of Amsterdam; Let’s make the most impact possible in the context of the city by using innovation and systemic thinking to ac-celerate Amsterdam’s sustainable transition. The city's commitment to sustainability, innovation, and high quality of life has made it a global leader in urban development. Amsterdam is the place where urban in-novation thrives in a fertile ecosystem of collaboration, experimentation and forward-thinking. If not in Amsterdam, where else?”
Lydia Giokari
Program Developer Urban Energy
