Co/Lab
Maakruimte voor Mooi NL
The power of design for spatial challenges
The Netherlands is facing major spatial challenges, such as housing, water, agriculture, mobility, but also inclusiveness and health. Challenges that call for major changes. What will the Netherlands look like in the future? And more importantly: how do we make that attractive future image a reality?
Within the Maakruimte voor Mooi NL (Creating space for Mooi NL) learning community, public clients, designers and scientists join forces to explore the transformative power of design together and from different perspectives. Because more and more stakeholders believe in the power of design to achieve an integrated approach to spatial tasks. Yet, the transformative power of design thinking and doing is still underused in many places. The Maakruimte voor Mooi NL learning community is making a case for a better understanding of using imagination and creativity in complex spatial issues.
At the heart of the learning community are 36 core team members: frontrunners in the field of design thinking and doing. They believe in the transformative power of design: in the power of imagination to create attractive future perspectives, to awaken the desire for a better future and to dare to take concrete steps towards that new future together.
Within the learning community of Maakruimte voor Mooi NL, we aim to unravel how to create space for the power of design within complex spatial challenges. We do this through three core teams, each focusing on a specific theme: sustainable agriculture & nature, energy & circular economy, and livable cities & regions. The core teams consist of participants from local governments, the design field, science, and the policy world, all catalysts for change from their respective positions.
Action programme spatial design (ARO)
The ‘Maakruimte learning community’ is part of the the Action programme spatial design (Actieprogramma Ruimtelijk Ontwerp (ARO)), which jointly promotes the power of design from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK). In terms of its contents, the learning community ties in with the concrete major spatial challenges and working methods of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations’ Mooi NL programme, and in doing so, it monitors the practical applicability of the knowledge developed within the learning community.