Nico is Head of the Urban Ecology Lab at TU Delft and teaches in the section of Landscape Architecture. He is a landscape architect, botanist and expert in plantings. He holds a Ph.D. in Synergetic Urban Landscape Planning from TU Delft and holds two MScs.

He chairs the TU Delft ECOcampus project on greening the campus. He has worked on circularity, urban ecosystems in various cities and on nature-based solutions for climate adaptation and was co-author of the Nature Based Urbanism approach. He is a senior fellow at the University of Toronto Canada and has lectured and conducted workshops all over the world. He worked, among others, for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London, private design offices and for the municipality of Rotterdam on various projects, ranging from urban ecology, to urban energy and water systems, planting plans, as well as the Museum Park design, urban metabolism and city-wide densification and greening plans. He led two successful entries from the city of Rotterdam for the International Architecture Biennale, such as densification + greening and the entry ‘Urban by Nature’ on urban metabolism.

He also writes for garden magazines and gives lectures on plantings, botanical field trips and gardens. He is chairman of the Friends of Rotstuin Ber Slangen Foundation in Maastricht and chairman of the scientific council of NL Greenlabel.

In 2022 he was conference leader of the global Ecocity World Summit.

research interest

• Synergetic Urban Landscape Planning
• Landscape Architecture
• Urban Ecology & Botany