In Tuindorp Oostzaan, the students looked into climate adaptation and propose solutions for heat, drought and water excess. The other group of MADE students tinkered with a plant with promising health benefits, the Sopropo.
Both projects are a good example of how students from MSc MADE are challenged to research and find innovative solutions to metropolitan challenges. MSc MADE focuses on the metropolitan challenges of Amsterdam as a booming city, using Amsterdam as a case study and a living lab. Set up in collaboration with AMS Institute, the program connects students to real life cases, business, the city and its citizens – training them hands-on for the multidisciplinary challenges of today’s and tomorrow’s cities. This year in Metropolitan Solutions, the students focus on two different cases:
Case ‘Sopropo’
Diabetes type II is a widespread disease throughout the Netherlands. More than one million Dutch inhabitants are diagnosed with the disease. The European funded project ‘Green Health Solutions’ researches the possibilities of plants with health promoting qualities. One of those plants is the Sopropo. This plant is widely consumed in Asian and Caribbean countries, but not yet well-known in the Netherlands.
This project aims to investigate the possibilities of a citywide introduction of the Sopropo to the market of Amsterdam, while at the same time keeping in mind values regarding social inclusion and sustainability. By doing this, the project focuses on rather tangible topics like the form of the product and the retail locations, as well as more socially rooted topics like consumer acceptance, behaviour and health perception.
Inside the Sopropo green house
Case ‘Tuindorp Oostzaan’
Tuindorp Oostzaan has experienced problems with heat, drought and water excess in the past. To maintain the liveability for this neighborhood and to manage these issues, climate adaptation in the future is going to be key. To find the right way to do so, this project aims at answering the following main question: How can the urban environment be adapted in order to improve water and heat resiliency in Tuindorp Oostzaan in a sustainable way?
Because there are several aspects that we think are important, we divided our group into four subgroups: Buildings, Environment, Community and Water. All these groups analyse Tuindorp from their own perspective taking heat and drought as their main consideration. After the analysis phase, we will start to focus on implementation and solutions.
The solutions will not be design based but decision based. This means that we are aiming to provide a report that follows a path from defining the problems in the area during the analysis phase, to finding fitting solution for these problems. We will thus create a variation of solutions fitting for specific circumstances that will be presented in a synthesis report.
Please register for the event by sending an email to George.