Design as a
systemic
act.
Architecture, urban design, and landscape across 52 countries. Every project begins with what is already there.
Practice
The studio is the design arm of Except Integrated Sustainability, founded in Utrecht in 1999. Except Design applies the SiD framework across architecture, urban design, and landscape: a methodology developed over two decades and published as an open resource in 2019.
Projects are stress-tested against ecological limits, regulatory structure, and social reality before a line is drawn. Design follows from evidence. The result is work that holds: across climate events, across tenure changes, across the first decade of use.
Selected work
All projects
Urban Planning
Blueprint for a self-sustaining city of 25,000 in Indonesia
Urban Planning
Net-positive energy residential community producing more than it consumes
Landscape
River corridor strategy reconnecting urban Seoul to Hangang ecology
Landscape
Inner-city parking lot redesigned as climate-adaptive biodiverse urban garden
Landscape
Regenerative farming community integrating food, energy, and habitat
Architecture
Multi-tenant office concept converting airport-adjacent space into innovation campus
Urban Planning
Urban strategy reconnecting city districts severed by motorway infrastructure
Urban Planning
Sustainable masterplan for historic neighbourhood integrating water and energy systems
Disciplines
The SiD framework covers energy, water, biodiversity, economy, health, and social resilience across each discipline. Every project draws from the same integrated model, at a different scale and program.
Masterplans, public realm strategies, and city-scale frameworks that hold complexity without flattening it. Density, mobility, and ecological infrastructure designed as a single system.
Buildings that function as part of their neighborhood metabolism: energy, water, food, and community woven into the program. Performance targets set before the brief is written.
Outdoor spaces designed as living systems: drainage, ecology, microclimate, and the kind of beauty that deepens over time. Water and biodiversity are the same design problem.
Structured processes for designing with communities, not for them. The methodology is documented and transferable. Participation that shapes outcomes, not just validates them.
Thinking
Every project starts
with a conversation.
Tell us about the place, the constraint, or the problem. We will tell you where the system is already trying to help.
Start a conversation →