Project “Megaphone” in Montreal (Canada) by Moment Factory.
Read more here.

Shaping Cities through Civic Interaction Design

Amsterdam and Rotterdam, 28-31 May 2026

Workshop promoted by City Space Architecture

in partnership with Civic Interaction Design Research Group, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

in collaboration with Public Space Detective

This workshop examines how cities and public spaces can be shaped through Civic Interaction Design, with a focus on care, stewardship, and collective wellbeing. Through site visits in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, a symposium at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and collaborative discussion sessions, participants will explore how design and interactive technologies can support collective city-making and more meaningful forms of civic engagement.

PROFESSIONAL IMPACT
This workshop offers participants a direct link to the emerging practice of Civic Interaction Design, positioning them at the forefront of how digital tools, spatial design, and civic initiatives can be combined to shape more inclusive and responsive public spaces.
The combination of site visits in Rotterdam with civic‑design case studies in Amsterdam provides concrete professional reference points for practitioners working on smart cities, climate adaptation, and participatory urban design. Participants will leave with strengthened capacities in facilitating community‑driven co‑creation, integrating interactive technologies into public space projects, and formulating interdisciplinary collaborations across design, civic tech, local government, and civil society.

RELATED READINGS

de Kreek, M., van de Mosselaer, F., Newell, K., de Waal, M., Gordon, E., Vlachokyriakos, V., Hamm, A., Ferri, G., Jaskiewicz, T., Smeenk, W., & Choi, J. H.-J. (2024). What is Next for Civic Design? Proceedings of DRS, Boston. Design Research Society. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1577

de Waal, M., de Lange, M., & Bouw, M. (2020). The hackable city: Exploring collaborative citymaking in a network society. In K. S. Willis & A. Aurigi (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities (pp. 351–366). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315178387-24

de Waal, M. (2021). Civic Interaction Design: Shaping Public Life in a Networked Society. Hogeschool van Amsterdam, NL. https://civicinteractiondesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/civic_interaction_design_English_2.pdf

INSTRUCTORS

Luisa Bravo, City Space Architecture

Luisa Bravo is a distinguished public space scholar, activist, and cultural entrepreneur with over two decades of academic and practical expertise. Her research and lectures have spanned more than 30 countries at leading universities, whilst contributing to major UN summits, such as Habitat III (2016) and the World Urban Forum (since 2018).
In 2013, she founded the non-profit City Space Architecture, launching pioneering initiatives including The Journal of Public Space, the Public Space Academy, and Museo Spazio Pubblico (Public Space Museum) in Bologna, Italy. Her leadership has fostered strategic partnerships with UN-Habitat and the World Economic Forum’s Davos Baukultur Alliance.
Through interdisciplinary work connecting academia, policy, and practice, she has emerged as a prominent advocate for public space culture and civic engagement via research, education, and global cooperation. She serves European and international institutions as an expert evaluator and advisor, contributing to programmes such as Horizon Europe, EIT Culture & Creativity, Fulbright Commission, European Prize for Urban Public Space, and has served as a consultant for global programmes like Safe and Sound Cities and the Global Platform for the Right to the City. Her works have been exhibited at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (South Corea, 2019), at the International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (Italy, 2021) and at the Biennale dello Stretto (Italy, 2024), where she curated the section on “Public Space / Relations”.
She holds the position of Adjunct Professor of Urban Design at the University of Florence in Italy.

Martijn de Wall, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Martijn de Waal is a Lector (professor) leading the Civic Interaction Design research group. He has a background in journalism, media studies and practical philosophy, and is now exploring the connection between these disciplines and the field of design. His research focus is on the relation between digital media and public space, with a specific interest in civic media and digital placemaking. Key publications include The Platform Society (Oxford University Press, 2019), with José van Dijck and Thomas Poell), The Hackable City (Springer, 2019), co-edited with Michiel de Lange and The City as Interface (NAi010 Publishers, 2014).
He is the general chair for the Media Architecture Biennale 2020. From 2018-2020, he served as the chair of the Digital Culture committee at the Creative Industries Fund NL, and from 2008 to 2013, he served as a member of the board at the Dutch Fund for Cultural Broadcasting. He co-founded The Mobile City, a non-profit that since 2007 has organised numerous workshops and events on digital media and urban culture, and also co-founded DeNieuweReporter.nl in 2005, a leading Dutch blog on the future of journalism.

Linda Vlassenrood, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Linda Vlassenrood is an independent curator and researcher whose mission is to facilitate understanding and discussion of complex urban issues in stimulating ways. She used to work as curator and chief curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) from 2000 to 2011. There, she curated a significant number of noteworthy exhibitions and events on architecture in its broadest sense, including the Dutch contribution “Hybrid Landscapes” to the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2004. In 2011, she founded Studio Linda Vlassenrood to study developing cities and shed light on underexposed issues. She mainly works for cultural institutions and municipalities. At the International New Town Institute (INTI), she set up and ran the international research program New New Towns. Why we need to rethink the city of tomorrow today​ on the redevelopment of Shenzhen (2012-2020). At Het Nieuwe Instituut, she curated the multiyear cultural program DATAstudio around data and the smart society in collaboration with the City of Eindhoven (2015-2018). She has been a core team member of Stad-Forum, an independent research organisation that gives (un)solicited advice to the city of Amsterdam on urban development (2019-2023).
Linda Vlassenrood is currently also conducting PhD research on Dutch urban planner Jakoba Mulder (1900-1988) at the Technical University of Eindhoven. She teaches, has authored and co-authored numerous publications, and is in demand as a speaker in the Netherlands and abroad. 

Nadja van der Weijden, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Nadia van der Weijden is a social artist with expertise in interactive and performative art that engages societal issues and interpersonal dynamics. Holding an MA in Reinventing Daily Life from the Sandberg Institute and a BA in Cultural Studies, her work creates spaces for audience introspection and challenges societal conventions. Notable performances such as the Common Good series have showcased her exploration of ownership, technology, and participation within local communities. Currently, Nadja is pursuing a Professional Doctorate to research co-created, socially engaged art practices and how they transform social interactions. With a focus on community-driven projects, Nadja’s work emphasises collaboration, engagement, and social transformation.

Marjolijn Ruyg, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Marjolijn Ruyg is a designer, researcher and lecturer. She is a Senior Lecturer of the Learning Community Urban Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
She has a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from Gerrit Rietveld Academy and a master’s degree (MSc) in Media Technology from Leiden University. From the early nineties, she worked as an interaction designer on several new media projects (e.g. The Digital City Amsterdam, Ars Electronica Austria, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). Her research is mainly in the field of Urban Interaction Design and the future of the digital city.

Tessa Steenkamp, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Tessa Steenkamp is a design researcher in the project Human Values for Smarter Cities, which runs from 2022 to 2026. The project addresses the use of image recognition in public space. How could these algorithms be designed and communicated in such a way that a wider public is aware of, and engaged in, their deployments? Tessa will explore these questions through designing digital and spatial experiments, applied to real-life use cases. 
With her design studio Bits of Space, Tessa gives shape to the interactions and relations between people, place and technology. The studio crosses traditional, professional boundaries and instead takes human interactions and public values as starting points. 
Before starting Bits of Space, Tessa alternated between being a coder, digital designer, urban planner, and public servant. She was an experience designer in the architectural process at UNSense, a startup of UNStudio. As an in-house designer at the City of Amsterdam, she set up a lab for redesigning local democracy, exploring what digital tools could do for collective decision-making. Earlier, she worked as a designer and maker at Umbrellium and as a software developer at Relational Urbanism. 

Floor van Ditzhuyzen, Public Space Detective

Floor van Ditzhuyzen is an architect, researcher, curator and tutor based in Rotterdam. Educated as an architect and urban designer at the Faculty of Architecture – TU Delft and the Universitat Polytècnica de Catalunya, she has a long-standing interest in and experience with public space. She is a founding partner of the interdisciplinary design studio, the Ontwerpwerkplaats and has won awards for projects such as the Pop-Up Bus Stop. Furthermore, she is a co-founder of the international ‘We Love Public Space’ Festival. Floor has been a tutor at the Rotterdam Academy of Art and the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and Urban Design. Currently, she teaches at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment – TU Delft.
In 2020, she founded the Public Space Detective blog, an ongoing research project investigating common and uncommon phenomena in public space. The blog reflects the results of Floor’s visual scavenging, roaming the streets of Rotterdam and other cities, with the objective not only to document but also to unravel and question what is observed.

Andrew Shaw, Breda University of Applied Sciences

Andrew Shaw is a designer, researcher, and educator based at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. He coordinates the Urban Life & Placemaking specialisation and teaches at both bachelor’s and master’s levels. His work focuses on sustainability, climate change, and inclusive urban development through participatory and interventive research methods.
Andrew is involved in the EU-funded InclusiveCity research project investigating inclusive placemaking in Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven neighbourhood. He holds an MA in Disaster Risk Management and Climate Governance and an MSc in Environmental Management. He has delivered guest lectures internationally, including at the University of Mysore, India, and has co-authored work on inclusive placemaking and urban leisure practices.

DAY 1 Thursday 28 May (Rotterdam)

AFTERNOON

Walkshop with Floor van Ditzhuijzen, Public Space Detective 

Studio visit: De Urbanisten

DAY 2 Friday 29 May (Amsterdam)

FULL DAY

Symposium and workshop hosted by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Venue: Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Benno Premselahuis.

In the past decade, datafication, digitisation, and privatisation have made their mark on cities and public spaces around the world. In this context, the research group of Civic Interaction Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is developing a new approach to facilitate civic initiatives and activate public spaces. It centres around civics as an orientation to society that prioritises relations over transactions and collective wellbeing over individual usability and seamless consumer experiences. Centring on notions of care and stewardship, it asks how design can create opportunities for people to interact, form alliances, generate shared interest, and care for matters of public concern. 
In this symposium, members of the Civic Interaction Design Research group will discuss their approach by showcasing four research projects. Martijn de Waal will introduce Civic Interaction Design as an approach for the shaping of urban and public life, and researchers from the group will provide examples from projects centred on the facilitation of collective city making and the activation of public spaces through interactive technologies. 

Symposium
Session 1: Curating neighbourhood resilience
Session 2: Citizens in the digital city

Workshop
Session 3: Human Values for Smarter Cities: designing engagement channels for civic participation in the smart city

DAY 3 Saturday 30 May (Amsterdam)

FULL DAY

Guided tour with Andrew Shaw, Breda University of Applied Sciences

DAY 4 Sunday 31 May (Amsterdam)

MORNING

Breakfast brainstorming session

Venue to be announced shortly.

Limited to 20 participants to ensure intimate group dynamics and meaningful exchange.

Applications will close on 30 April 2026 -> extended to 10 May 2026.

Fee: €350 (25% discount for City Space Architecture members)
A 20% discount is available for applications received by 26 April.

Fee covers workshop programming only. Participants arrange independent travel, accommodation, and meals.

If you have any questions, please write to: workshop@publicspaceacademy.org

Apply here