Urban Lab @ Metropolitan Solutions

The workshop creates an inspirational space to speculate on possible diplomacy applications by projecting onto diplomacy innovative digital solutions from numerous fields.

City Making Lab is a series of programs focusing on digitalization and the city. City Making Lab is a co-operation between Hybrid Space Lab and Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). City Making Lab investigates ongoing developments at the intersection of cities and digital technology, engaging with urban mobility and public space, new patterns of space utilization for living and working, circular city, climate adaptation and healthy cities.

Lectures, Discussions, @ Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, 2019-2020

Water is the necessary resource for life. Human settlements have always been dependent upon access to clean water and its relative scarcity – freshwater makes up only 2.5% of water available on the earth – has awarded it the name ‘blue gold’. If world population increases as expected, hitting the 9 billions threshold by 2050, will water resources be sufficient?

Embassay Lab Water Conscious Fashion, @ Neonyt, Kraftwerk Berlin, 16 January 2019

Fast-paced advances in technology are creating diffuse and volatile conditions in which international actors operate. Disruptive innovations such as machine learning and big data analytics are changing governments, NGOs, the media, businesses, and in some cases entire industries. New and unexpected players entering the field are putting pressure on the traditional division of roles between politics, business, journalism and civil society.

Lectures & Workshop @ Un-Conference Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 2 February 2018

Hybrid Diplomacy designates the combining of traditional diplomacy and innovative diplomacy. Hybrid Diplomacy includes the collaboration between state and non-state actors in a network diplomacy that involves next to traditional diplomats and governments, also civil society and NGOs, businesses, international organizations, and other players. Hybrid Diplomacy addresses also the multiple hybridizations in the diplomatic field, including diplomatic practices that combine communication in physical space and social media, that deal with crossover issues, and that mediate in the interaction fields of different cultures.

Supported by digital technology, we are experiencing a shift in economic transactions and thus social relationships. Access to goods is replacing ownership. Traditional commodity producers are transforming into services providers. Community-based online services provide information, enabling the optimization of resources and facilitating peer-to-peer transactions.Sharing Economy is a common notion describing this ongoing fundamental transformation of our economies and societies, other terms being Collaborative Consumption, Peer-to-Peer Economy, Access Economy or On-Demand Economy.

Embassy Lab Future Diplomacy brings together experts from the Harvard J. F. Kennedy School of Government, the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, Global Diplomacy Lab, the German Federal Office, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international diplomats, creative professionals, and other experts.

Embassy Lab Co-Curating the City researches the potential of curating as co-creating with the public as well as the transformations of the role of the expert curator.

Today one can easily access culture as well as purchase goods and services from anywhere, just with a finger-swipe. Digital technology expands the physical dimension of shops and exhibition spaces into the virtual realm. Contemporary developments, like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, further fuse the physical and the digital into a hybrid experience.

Highly innovative, creative and pragmatic Dutch approach to develop technology solutions for global challenges at the Hannover Messe 2014.

Circular Economy encompasses technical as well as biological cycles and has as a goal to keep materials and products at their highest utility and value during the whole up-cycling process.

Sustainable and innovative cycling traffic resources and knowledge exchange between the cities of Amsterdam and Berlin.

Hybrid Health focuses on innovative health solutions that combine the physical and the digital.

Embassy Lab Co-Operative was a one-day program for the Berlin visit of the Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Ronald Plasterk, February 23rd 2015.
Next to his meeting with the German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Barbara Hendricks, Minister Ronald Plasterk visited Berlin urban initiatives, cooperatives and participation movements to discuss them the potential of urban co creation.

Discussions & Visits@ Embassy Lab Co-Operative, Berlin, 23 February 2015

Prototyping an open source toolkit for CRISIS design, design addressing sudden or unpredictable changes in climate and social conditions and dealing with migration and mobility as an effect of globalisation, unrest or war.

How can we co-create the Smart City?
The program addresses Smart City Governance as an interactive process and provides networking opportunities between the different actors involved in urban transformation.

The interaction between physical and digital communities, concentrating on knowledge and behaviour in relation to health.

Mobility+ extends the theme of mobility into urban service design, smart tourism, smart retail, smart & healthy city

Embassy Lab is a laboratory and a prototype for experimenting with future functions of the 27 Dutch Embassies in the European Union. Embassy Lab is a prototype for experimenting with future functions of embassies in the current age of EUization, globalization and digitalization.