Our Story
We understand how complex urban development has become, dealing with transformation of existing areas with dispersed property and differing interests. In order to reach sustainable results on issues like real estate, energy and mobility, you need on-going and active collaboration with the different local stakeholders. We believe that the power of an actively and creatively engaged local collective, with all parties included, allows you to co-create the resilient city of the future.
The Transformcity vision and approach are rooted in ten years of on-the-ground pioneering in Amsterdam. When in 2010 our founder Saskia Beer lost her job as an architect due to the crisis, she decided to unsolicitedly adopt one of Amsterdam’s largest and most complex transformation areas. Starting with very small steps, she turned the area into a living lab for our integral and layered strategy. The basis is a flexible process framework that combines stakeholder coalition formation with open community building. With a strategic mix of creative and engaging storytelling, sessions, interventions, design and tooling we gradually shape a shared future vision. We make the different interests and cross-links tangible while tackling thematic and spatial issues and unlocking investments. Our focus on an optimistic and personal atmosphere safeguards long-term trust and ownership and rapid adaptation to unexpected changes or opportunities.
The success of the Transformcity approach was recognized not only locally but around the world and led to national and international awards and traction. In 2018 Tim van den Heuvel joined the team to help further develop and scale our services and tools. He also is an architect by training and has extensive experience in designing and facilitating complex organizational and digital transformations for both public and private sector.
