Agency for engaged designers and thinkers who support future publics

What we do

We are a collaborative of engaged designers and thinkers who support future publics to intervene in current societal challenges. We use action research and design methods to engage, empower and emancipate new publics. We stimulate collaboration between citizens, government, market and educational institutions. Our processes are based upon a critical approach to addressing system failure. We strive towards generating collective well-being, sustainability, equality and shared wealth.

We investigate, design and teach on how to transform societal systems in such a way that government, market and citizens are maximally facilitated in their contribution to sustainable and just communities.

Who we are

Els Leclercq

Els is an urban researcher, designer and teacher with extensive experience both in academic research projects as in design practice. Within her research and design projects she predominantly focuses on a sustainable, smart and shared future built environment, and in particular how societal actors, notably citizens, play a role in the production of space. Els is an experienced lecturer and speaker and is author of a number of published articles, blogs, and books.

Emiel Rijshouwer

Emiel has a background in design, sociology and future studies. His research concerns online and offline self-organization and the social and societal aspects of smart city development (data empowerment). He uses and develops design and future-driven methods to:

structure processes to engage stakeholders in research/innovation/participatory processes;
express, discuss and test new/alternative/innovative ideas;
grow and support ‘publics.’

Vera van Maaren

Vera is an urban designer and consultant for the circular built environment. Vera teaches transdisciplinary courses at TU Delft and TU Berlin. In Australia, she worked with bamboo architects Cave Urban (Sydney, 2019-2021). She has experience in circularity since 2017 at The Green Village, Platform CB ‘23 (2018-19), Nairobi youth challenge (2019) and in the Stylos Pavilion design+build team (2016-17). Vera holds a M.Sc in Urbanism and Architecture from TU Delft and a BSc of Architecture and Building Sciences from TU Delft.

Almar Bok

Almar is learning designer and teacher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, interested in developing and facilitating collaborative processes of re-design and re-imagination in sustainability contexts. Central to his work is the notion of ‘learning how to learn differently’, and in his work he likes to experiment with unconventional methods and interventions that allow stakeholders to view their context with new perspectives.

Who we work with

We work with citizens, knowledge institutions, local councils, ministries, (of government), civic society organisations and other design and research practices. If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch, we are always interested in new collaborations.