The book is a true collaborative effort, credited tothe City of Amsterdam (the book’s subject) and researchers from Naturalis, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Inside Outside, and Artis, with its origins in the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism and the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
The concept is credited to Joyce van den Berg and Hans van der Made, chief design and landscape architect and senior chief planner for the City of Amsterdam, though even that information is not easy to come by in
this group effort. Simply put, the message of the book is focused on fully incorporating biodiversity into public space planning, starting with the soil and its inhabitants.
As van den Berg and van der Made neatly put it, “The design of space in the city needs to be more integral and develop upwards from below rather than downwards from above.”
Getting the science of subsurface biodiversity across isn’t easily done, but the authors’ mix of graphics, photography, and very close-in images (arachnophobes take note) is strong and beautifully designed. With appealingly titled chapters such as “Networks of the Fungal Kingdom” and “Soil Animals Need to Go to Town,” BiodiverCITY manages to get the technical points across with a light touch and even a bit of wit without sacrificing detail or urgency. If every city could have a reference like this, it might spark a transformative moment.