UPCOMING COURSES

The Independent School for the City is a school in, of, and for the city. It builds on the conviction that strategies for the city - architectural and economic, spatial and social - should be based on real, first hand, empirical research. The Independent School for the City offers a variety of post-graduate educational programmes ranging from shorter one-day workshops and masterclasses, one or two-week studio's to an intensive 3 month programme on contemporary Urbanism. Below we'll give you and overview of our upcoming activities.

A four day exploration on the global impact of the Rotterdam port through the soybean. Fri 16 & Sat 17 + Fri 23 & Sat 24 May 2025.

To See the World in a Soybean

In this workshop explore the global impact of the Rotterdam port on societies and the environment worldwide. An impact that is not only produced by the port itself, but also by those parties and productions that it’s indirectly responsible for up and down its value chain. To really understand how our local economy is entangled with the world, we will focus on one specific product - the soybean - and see how Rotterdam’s harbour and its affiliated network of businesses are directly tied to the destruction of rainforests, the industrial scale production of cheap meat, and the exploitation of human and natural capital all over the world. We will highlight stories that expose the often-hidden impact of this trade, from the transshipment of goods to their consumption, and the resulting effects on communities and the environment.