Atmosphere/Amsterdam: Architectural media and the urban (re)imagination of nature

In the summer of 2020, the city of Amsterdam published the Amsterdam Green Infrastructure Vision 2050: A Liveable City for People, Plants, and Animals as part of the larger (re)positioning of Amsterdam as a ‘sustainable’ city. This article-based dissertation focuses on seven different sites to explore how architecture contributes to the imagination and realization of sustainability: The interactive cartographic database Maps Amsterdam, the three residential building projects ReGen Villages, The Urban Tree Village and VERTICAL, and the three neighborhood (re)developments Sloterdijk, Zuidas and Bajeskwartier. From drawings and sketches of initial designs via virtual renderings and animations to photographs and videos of the construction, architecture can be understood as an inherently mediated process – and yet, these media are rarely approached as a site of negotiation. Conceptualizing the term architectural media, this thesis positions mediations of architecture as a key site of place-making and meaning-making – particularly in processes of urban transformation. In the context of the ‘sustainable’ city, architectural media are (re)imagining urban nature(s), (re)constructing urban future(s) and (re)producing urban atmosphere(s). Weaving together the different case studies, the individual chapters move through the architectural process, from the initial urban policies and plans delineating the city’s development to virtual renderings of proposed constructions, architectural models as haptic visualizations of neighborhood development plans, architectural photographs of different moments in the construction process to the construction site itself. Taken together, the chapters underline how becoming ‘sustainable’ and making a ‘sustainable’ city are entangled processes of imagination and realization.