Matching ambitions

In the early days of Edhv Studio, the Eindhoven-based social housing corporation Trudo was one of our main clients. Trudo was known as a progressive organization under the guidance of Thom Aussems and played a key role in some of Eindhovens’ most prolific urban developments in some of which we had the pleasure to play a small role now and then. Our ambitions seemed to match for several years. Their projects enabled us to develop our studio further because they allowed us a lot of creative freedom. But as these things sometimes go our ways parted and the projects weren’t really coming our way anymore.

A thick piece of advice

Just before his retirement Thom Aussems invited us to do one last project together. A book by the name ‘Urban Complexity, Case Eindhoven’ A goodbye to the city in the form of a thick piece of advice. Over the years as director of Trudo, Thom accumulated a huge amount of articles and information on urban development. This rich collection of clippings, articles, and links was the starting point.

Embrace the roughness

For the book, we decided to embrace the roughness of all this information and took the ‘scrap book’ approach. organizing all material into different categories with a summary at each end. Like a to-do list to the city.

This resulted in a 420-page softcover book. Dealing with pretty much every urban topic like Economy, health care, mobility, renewable energy, migration, diversity, emancipation, equality, segregation, gentrification, affordable living, and governance. Put together like a huge bundle of urban inspiration for every urban jungle-ist to explore.