MVRDV announced today that urban designer Enno Zuidema will head its department for Strategic Urban Planning from 1^st September 2018. In this role he will oversee MVRDV’s urban planning projects and development strategies in the Netherlands and abroad.

Out of Rotterdam, Zuidema set up his own practice in 1998 focused on developing studies, scenarios and visions for communities, cities and regions in the Netherlands, .  In 2010 he brought his office to Groningen and engaged in design tasks in the field of peripheral growth, the rural society.

Zuidema: “The past twenty years have been a fantastic period during which I was able to engage across all levels of stakeholders, from residents to municipalities, developers and provinces and together worked towards developing truly integrated urban proposals, often combined with ecological, landscape and infrastructural solutions. A collaborative process combined with an analytical approach has always been key in my work as well as that of MVRDV. So I feel it comes as a natural step to develop my expertise further together, both in the Dutch and the international context.”

In 1998 and 2008, Zuidema was awarded, as part of different teams respectively, the Eo Wijersprijs, a Dutch award for regional design.

Besides running his own practice, Zuidema held various teaching positions and memberships, as head of Urban Design at the Academie van Bouwkunst Rotterdam, lecturer at the Hanze Hogeschool Groningen and board member of OASE, an investigative journal for architecture and urban design.

Enno Zuidema and MVRDV know each other for more than two decades through academic work and he and Nathalie de Vries have been together in the board of OASE magazine.

During a transition period, Enno Zuidema will finish his current projects in the North of the Netherlands, Friesland and Groningen, while transferring two projects and continuing work on behalf of MVRDV on a future vision for the earthquake affected area in the Province of Groningen as well as a study for the town of Overschild within that area.