Rooftop Greenhouse Agrotopia has won the Belgian Steel Construction Award 2022 in the category industrial buildings. According to the Jury led by Architect Stéphane Beel, Agrotopia forms an “Ultimate cross-fertilization between architecture and agriculture.”

“An exemplary densification of an agricultural research center into an urban horticultural square. This conservatory construction is a one-to-one solution: what you see is what you get. By bending the conservatory facades in two directions into faceted facades, a fascinating image is generated.”

Agrotopia was realized in collaboration with Meta Architectuurbureau on behalf of Inagro and REO auction. The steel construction was designed in collaboration with Smiemans projects and Tractebel engineering and realized by contractors Persyn with Deforche construct.

The jury praises the innovative, sustainable and inspiring character of the building for the construction sector: “The Agrotopia project distinguishes itself as an extremely versatile project that is innovative and progressive in various fields. The project bears witness to intensive collaboration between various disciplines and partners. It not only broadens the future possibilities for greenhouse horticulture as a food producer, but is also an example for other industries in terms of use of space, circularity, innovative architecture and sustainable technology. The high ambitions in terms of content and technology take shape in an inviting building that can be a source of inspiration for organizations within and outside the sector.”

 Agrotopia was created in collaboration with META Architectuurbureau and commissioned by Inagro vzw and REO Veiling. The design team also consisted of the Greenhouse Horticulture business unit of Wageningen University & Research, Tractebel Engineering and Smiemans Projecten Greenhouse Horticulture Projects.

7 December 2022 During the 15th edition of World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Lisbon Rooftop Greenhouse Agrotopia won the WAF Award in the category Completed Buildings for Production energy & recycling after competing against 8 other impressive finalists from a total of 252 entries from all over the globe.  Agrotopia was also highly commended for Best use of Natural light Prize, shortlisted for the for the Futureglass prize and ended runner up for World Building of the Year 2022.

“We are absolutely honoured to receive this award. It is a recognition of our design for Europe’s largest Rooftop greenhouse. The innovative building is an example for future food production in the city, intensive use of space and circular energy and water use with sustainable greenhouse horticulture.” Jago van Bergen | director at van Bergen Kolpa Architects

Since its opening in 2021 Agrotopia was also shortlisted for the Dezeen Awards 2022, the ARC22 awards, published worldwide in numerous leading architecture magazines, online architecture platforms and the Flemish Architecture yearbook 2022. Agrotopia was made in collaboration with Meta Architectuurbureau and commissioned by Inagro and REO veiling. The design team consisted of Wageningen University & Research business unit Greenhouse Horticulture, Tractebel Engineering and Smiemans Greenhouse projects.

Plant City is a climate-proof development model for plant-based food, housing and energy supply. The Brabant chamber landscape, once an example of small-scale food production for the surrounding towns and villages, has grown into a large-scale nitrogen production landscape for the global livestock industry. At the same time, these areas are becoming increasingly wet and drying out under the influence of climate change. How can these areas play a new role in the demand for plant-based food and biobased housing of today's consumers? In Plant City, dry and wet landscapes alternate with opportunities for new crops and cultivation techniques.

The dry landscapes where pixel agriculture contributes protein-rich products such as lupine, quinoa and field beans to the transition from animal to vegetable proteins. And where with strips of agriculture products such as barley, grass-clover, chicory, rye and wheat contribute to biodiversity in a variety of ways.

The water landscapes where plants such as cattails contribute to sustainable building materials in large wet plots. And where reed, rice, water lentils and vitamin-rich crops such as cranberries are harvested with water farming.

The forest landscapes where coniferous and deciduous trees of different ages contribute to a new biobased building culture in the Netherlands in varied plots.

Project: Research, design and exhibition model. Client: International Architecture Biënnale Rotterdam 2022, Ministry of Make Curators: Saskia van Stein, Zus and MANN. Programme: 400ha climate-proof landscape for 10,000 homes, food and energy supply. Location: North Brabant. Planning: Research and design 2022. Publications: article on architectenweb "Wat valt er te leren van Ministerie van Maak?"

Finalists Van Bergen Kolpa Architects + Meta Architectuurbureau will present Agrotopia live for an international jury in Lisbon during the World Architecture festival from 30 November - 2 December 2022.

The Job Dura Prize 2020 had the theme 'Living: at home in Rotterdam'. Projects that provide innovative or exemplary solutions for the housing challenge of the city of Rotterdam have been sought and thus respond in several ways to improving the quality of life of its residents, both now and in the future.

Family Scraper De Maasbode was nominated. The jury is impressed by the in-depth research that preceded the development of this new housing concept and sees this initiative as a serious response to keep families in the city. It shows the guts of the developer to opt for innovation and quality in such a clear way, partly through the oversized outdoor spaces that are being realized in the project and the addition of spacious family homes. The design of the Maasbode is also very convincing and of the highest order in terms of spatial layout and materialization.

Van Bergen Kolpa supports and co-finances the Sky High Vertical Farming research with NWO, Unilever, Philips, Bayer, Priva and GrowX. The four-year and 5 million euro multidisciplinary research into Vertical Farming in urban buildings is in collaboration with Wageningen UR and TU Delft.

Food is a basic necessity for every human being on earth. The way we will produce and consume our food in the future has an impact on ourselves, our environment and our society.

Food to Be shows how technology and design can answer these questions. The Netherlands is one of the world's largest agricultural exporters and is internationally renowned for its technological knowledge and design talent. Therefore, the Netherlands can play an important role in the challenges of the future with its partners in the European Union.

On the basis of five themes, we explore together with leading Dutch designers how our future food system will shape.

Project: exhibition and interviews for the Netherlands EU Presidency 2016 and its meeting for agriculture ministers
Curators: Jago van Bergen, Marije Vogelzang, Annelies Hermsen, Koert van Mensvoort, Sietske Klooster
Organisation: Food Cabinet, Helen Kranstauber
Location: STEC Endhoven
Date: May 31st thru June 5th 2016

In 2015, the year of the World Expo in Milan, MAXXI Rome presents an exhibition that focuses on every day issues related to food and nutrition that have an impact on people, their homes and the planet. The issues are addressed by the exhibition, Food from the spoon to the world, curated by Pippo Ciorra. A major project (involving 2500 square meters of exhibition space) that MAXXI devotes to food, made in collaboration with the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) and the World Food Programme of the United Nations (WFP)

Over 50 works made by artists and architectswill be on view, starting with the dimension of the human body and expanding to become global: from the kitchen to the home, from the city to the region, to the world. On display, among others, are models and drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier; a mock-up of the kitchen project for the chef Thomas Keller, documentation of the performance Pig Roast by Gordon Matta-Clark, the farm of the future of Van Bergen Kolpa Architects, the installation Giant Mushroom by Carsten Holler, the video Alphabet by Mohamed Allam, and a performance realized ad hoc by the Chinese group called Yangjiang Group.

Bangkok Adaptive City 2045 is a publication, exhibition and symposium on water adaptive urban planning and architecture in Bangkok. The manifestation will be carried out by a multi disciplinary team of Thai and Dutch experts in the field of Urban Planning, Architecture and civil engineering. Together they aim to research, develop and promote the Fine Traditions of building with water from both countries, offering solutions for todays reality of the Bangkok Metropolis.

The manifestation will take place over the course of December 2012 till January 2013 with exhibitions hosted by the Jim Thompson House and the Silpakorn University. The symposium will hosted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bangkok on the 30th of January 2013.

Project: Book publication, Exhibithion and symposium
Organisation & content: with Silpakorn University and Fokke Moerel
Curators: Apiradee Kasemsook, Fokke Moerel
Exhibithions: Jim Thompson House Bangkok en Pra Prompijitra Architecture Gallery van de Silpakorn University
Team: Van Bergen Kolpa Architects, Silpakorn University Bangkok, Kasetsart University, Thailand, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Delft University of Technology, Royal Haskoning DHV, Supermachine Studio Architects Thailand, ONGSA Architects Thailand
Support: Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bangkok, The Netherlands Architecture Fund, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration - City Planning Department, Jim Thomson House Bangkok

The annual World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Barcelona is the biggest architecture event in the world with contributors from 58 countries. After the first selection round by an international jury with Michael Sorkin, Ben van Berkel en Peter Cook the projects Co-Housing Hoogvliet and Park Supermarket were short listed for the World Architecture Festival Award 2011.

Project: Exhibition en presentation
Location: Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona
Exhibition: November 2nd till November 4th 2011
Presentation: November 3rd 2011

Van Bergen Kolpa has been selected by the AIA San Francisco and the Center for Architecture + Design to contribute to this year's Architecture and the City festival. Along with 2012 Architects, OMA, ZUS and four offices from the Bay Area the Architecture of Consequence theme will be further explored; "The exhibit demonstrates how progressive design and creative problem solving can be used to enhance our lives and the health of our community. Although we do not yet know what a truly sustainable future will look like, options will come from people experimenting in new and novel ways."

Joined by experts in the fields of global foresight, urban agriculture, micro-economics and environmental policy, Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott of San Francisco based IwamotoScott Architecture and Jago Van Bergen of Rotterdam based Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten will lead a discussion that examines how food and energy production can be localized. This cross-cultural dialogue, moderated by Dr. Chris Luebkeman, Director of Foresight and Insight ARUP, will examine IwamotoScott Architecture's HYDRO-NET: City of the Future, a transformative new typology of urban architecture that fosters new social spaces and urban forms and Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten's Park Supermarket, a spatial development model for a national supermarket located in the metropolitan parks of the Netherlands.

Amsterdam Homemade is a spatial development model for a landscape supermarket. due to urbanization, the dutch polders, once the icon of our food production landscapes, have over the past centuries come to lie like parks in the Amsterdam metropolis. Amsterdam Homemade shows the potential of these green wedges for recreation and food production for the metropolis that today knows 170 different nationalities, food and culinary traditions.

NEW YORK, New York, May 20, 2011 The Center for Architecture and ARCAM are thrilled to announce the exhibition programs for Glimpses of New York and Amsterdam in 2040. The exhibition challenges ten architecture, landscape architecture and design firms to imagine an urban future that includes new waterside cityscapes, neighborhoods, and transit systems. The exhibition will open in New York at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, on June 8, and remain on view until September 10. The show will also be installed in Amsterdam, on view at the Amsterdam Center for Architecture (ARCAM) June 17 until August 13.

Project: Research, vision development and exhibition
Redactie en samenstelling: Maarten Kloos
Curator: Luc Vrolijks en Marlies Buurman
Horticulture advice: PRIVA Jan Westra
Landscape and ecology advice: Wageningen UR Vincent Kuypers

Bij de tentoonstelling genaamd 'Architecture of Consequence', gecureerd door het Nederlands Architectuur Instituut (NAi), is een gelijknamig boek verschenen. In het boek Architectuur als Noodzaak - Nederlandse ontwerpen voor de toekomst komt het werk van 25 Nederlandse ontwerpbureaus aan bod, die allemaal vanuit een maatschappelijke urgentie werken. Aan de hand van de conclusies uit de manifestatie Maak ons Land is de hedendaagse ontwerppraktijk onder de loep genomen.

Het resultaat is een agenda voor ruimtelijke innovatie waarmee de ruimtelijke ordening en architectuur de komende jaren vooruit kunnen. Het sluit aan bij het wereldwijd groeiende besef dat het beantwoorden van fundamentele kwesties van onze tijd een zaak van iedereen is. De thema's zijn universeel; ze beroeren en motiveren de hele internationale architectuurgemeenschap. Daarmee is dit boek tevens een oproep tot het ontwerpen van een betere wereld.

De internationale reizende tentoonstelling 'Architecture of Consequence' toont een wisselende selectie van dezelfde ontwerpbureaus als in het gelijknamige boek, afgestemd op de locatie waar de tentoonstelling te zien zal zijn. De getoonde ontwerpen zijn ontstaan vanuit de ambitie om bij te dragen aan een duurzame toekomst. Door ze op verschillende schaalniveaus te tonen wordt de thematiek verder uitgediept. 

Met bijdragen van: 2012Architecten, Atelier Kempe Thill, biq stadsontwerp, Must urbanism, OMA, Powerhouse Company, Rietveld Landscape, STEALTH.unlimited, Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten, ZUS.

Project: Boek en reizende Tentoonstelling
Redactie en samenstelling: Ole Bouman
Curator: Saskia van Stein
Film Park Supermarkt: ism Catalogtree
Fotograaf Nabuurschappen: Jeroen Musch
Exhibits: Sao Paulo 2009, Moskou 2009, Rotterdam 2010, Nijmegen 2010, Mumbai 2011, San Francisco 2011