Practitioners Interview Series | Lidewij Lenders

Lidewij Lenders is an architect and founder of MAATworks Architects, based in Amsterdam, specializing in timber construction and biobased design. She graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology in 1997. A decade later, she founded her architectural practice, driven by the belief that sustainable design and construction, free from waste and harmful emissions, is not only possible but essential. Lidewij is dedicated to accelerating the transition to a biobased building economy through various initiatives. In addition to designing and constructing exemplary projects, she is passionate about expanding and sharing knowledge. She achieves this through research, guest lecturing, and developing educational programs at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Her innovative work has earned her several timber architecture awards, and has been featured in leading publications, including the Yearbook, Architecture in the Netherlands, 2010/11.

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Photos by Marcel van der Burg

Author

Julia Gospodinova
Julia Gospodinova
Architect

Ir. Julia Gospodinova holds an M.Sc. in Architecture, Urbanism, and Building Sciences from TU Delft. Specializing in Building Technology, she graduated cum laude in 2023. Being passionate about circularity and humanitarian architecture, she combined those topics in her thesis, titled: “Circular Transitional Housing for Displaced People in Extreme Conditions: The Case of Pakistan.” The project won the Circularity in the Built Environment Graduation Award in the category of Buildings & Neighborhoods. Currently, she is the secretary at Project Safe Refuge, a foundation dedicated to providing architectural aid to displaced communities.

Circularity for Educators

The platform is intended to provide with content on either circularity or pedagogy for and about circularity. It is one of the outcomes of the Circular Impulse Initiative (CII), a project intending to enhance the integration of circularity in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment education. The platform mainly aims to help tutors get better acquainted with circularity in the built environment by providing a series of resources on this subject that they can either view to get better informed or directly share with their students in class or online. A large number of the Faculty's professors and researchers have contributed substantially both in creating a coherent narrative for circularity in the built environment as well as further elaborating on different aspects of it. Besides this one, a new platform for interaction and direct exchange was also established in parallel that we call ‘Educators for Circularity‘. This one offers the opportunity for all of us to meet and share our experiences and learn from one another.

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