About the New Architect

The curriculum of Thijs Asselbergs’ professorship at the Delft University of Technology also bears witness to the desire for innovation and collaboration. As a professor of Architectural Engineering (since 2008), he develops innovative technological solutions, together with students, as an integral part of architecture. He interprets technology broadly. It’s about industrialised, flexible and circular building solutions, such as those for the one million houses that must be built in the coming decade. However, Thijs Asselbergs wants to do more with his students. He wants to understand the possibilities of data architecture, research digitisation and robotisation, think about new financing of the construction industry, devise systems in the field of mobility and investigate how environmental damage and the loss of open space can be limited. The breadth of this research area already shows how the profession of architect is changing. That is why Asselbergs set up the platform De Nieuwe Architect (The New Architect) prepare his students for their future roles. He is also involved in BouwLab and Openbuilding.co, two initiatives that stimulate innovation in the design and modernisation of buildings, building on the Open Building approach developed by John Habraken in the 1960s.

Thijs Asselbergs graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology in 1982. He co-founded the design magazine Items in the early-1980s and published articles about design and architecture in various daily newspapers and professional journals. In 1985, he established his own design firm in Haarlem. At the end of the 1980s, he was head of the Architecture department of the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam,, and in the early-1990s, he was the city architect of Haarlem. He has chaired various building aesthetics committees of large cities and was Building Aesthetics adviser to the Chief Government Architect and Crown-appointed member of the Dutch Council for Culture. In addition, he occupies various board positions and is jury chairman of renowned Dutch architecture prizes. Up until 2010, he was chairman of the Archiprix Netherlands Foundation and Archiprix International, which organises prizes and exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad for young, recently graduated designers. He is director of Thijs Asselbergs architectuurcentrale. Completed projects include housing complexes in numerous cities, Ruimte voor de Waal (Room for the River Waal) in Nijmegen (Gulden Feniks prize in 2017) and Cloud Nine in the music venue TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht (Rietveld architecture prize in 2015).