Palmbout-Urban Landscapes produces urban, landscape and public space designs for a great diversity of situations and a great diversity of scale levels, ranging from regional plans to street profiles, from urban centres to motorway intersections, from study projects to building plans. The projects include large urban extensions such as IJburg, Ypenburg and sections of Leidsche Rijn. We give shape to the regeneration of the post-war city through plans for a whole range of locations, such as the Lelylaan and the Staalmaplein neighbourhood in Amsterdam west and the Lijnbaan area in Rotterdam. We have had long-term involvement as designer and supervisor in the redevelopment of, for example, Ede-Oost and Maastricht-Belvédère. Furthermore, we work on detailed landscape plans, plans at the regional scale, new residential neighbourhoods and studies into the integration of infrastructural works.
Generating visual images is the quintessence of our design approach. We visualise both the embedment of the project in the larger scale of city and landscape, and its elaboration in terms of typology, details and materials. We seek a relation between solidity and flexibility, which a good urban design plan should offer.
As spatial designers we cooperate with other disciplines, decision makers, developers, housing associations, municipal services, residents and users. This makes all parties involved support the plan. In this process, the role of he design as such is to catalyse, steer and inspire.
At our practice the following disciplines are represented: urban design, architecture and landscape architecture. Depending on the quantity and the nature of our workload, we work together with a number of freelancers. The current size of the practice offers optimum conditions for overview, interaction among the staff and the well-defined final responsibility.
The basis for Palmbout-Urban Landscapes was laid by Frits Palmboom in 1990. In 1994 Jaap van den Bout and Frits Palmboom entered into partnership as Palmboom & van den Bout Stedenbouwkundigen. In 2008 Jeroen Ruitenbeek joined the management as a partner. Since then the practice has been active under the name PALMBOUT-Urban Landscapes. PALMBOUT-Urban Landscapes employs around 15 staff.
We operate in the Netherlands, Flanders and the United States.
Designing is inventing
In our projects we look for the appropriate combination of programme and location, of logical simplicity and casual poetry. A good design is both spatial and tangible, comprehensible and surprising, grand and intimate, timeless and changeable. These are the inspiring features that beautiful cities and landscapes share.
The questions we are asked are generally formulated in the language of words and figures. The answers we give use the language of images. This field of tension between word and image is where we come up with our inventions. By sketching and talking, calculating and drawing, by study and dialogue we shed new light on the assignment. In a constantly changing but nevertheless pleasantly stubborn world, our designs must make innovation possible while being able to stand the test of time. In our view, the spatial plan always implies play with time: it lays down and creates scope for the unknown.