From the jury report: “Greenblue structures within our urban areas can’t be designed separately from the building anymore. While our country keeps on urbanizing, we also want to increase its natural value and biodiversity.
We can only achieve this if we combine the development of new building ensembles with improving nature. It is exactly in this complex task that DELVA excels through their integral design approach. Repeatedly the office has shown that it can interconnect economy and ecology.” With these words, the jury has grasped the core of DELVA’s ambition.
HOLT, Groningen 
VDMA, Eindhoven
DELVA turns the design process upside down and radically opts for the landscape as the basis of each project. Development is used as a means to densify and greenify. Each project explores a new and multifunctional meaning for the landscape. Which, through integral collaboration, will be connected inseparably with buildings, technological, political and financial viability.
Take, for example, the design for a casino building as a dune landscape in Middelkerke, the ‘Brabants Stadsbos’ urban forest as part of the dense urban VDMA development in Eindhoven, and Park ‘Het Oog’: the future self-cleaning water landscape on Strandeiland. As a collective, DELVA continuously seeks to create generous gestures derived from the landscape, bringing us closer to an environment that we all dream off.
HET OOG – Amsterdam 
HET OOG – Amsterdam
It is unique that a landscape architecture firm is nominated for this award. “The jury realizes that with the nomination of DELVA it is pushing the boundaries of what can be classified as ‘Architect of the Year’, but it also wants to send out a signal about the importance of making our urban environment greener. This is not something we can just do ‘on the side’, but rather something that increasingly has become an inseparable part of building design.”
These words exactly describe the ambition DELVA continues to strive for. In addition to DELVA four other parties have been nominated. However, the final choice for the Architect of the year will be determined by a public vote that is now taking place. Source and images Courtesy of DELVA.
Geestwater, Lisse 