FISALAB, founded in 1999, is a laboratory for Art & Architecture. Our vision is to make this world a better place for living by our work.

We like to cite Joop Hardy’s meaning of “living”¹:

And “living” means that you mentally, physically, spiritually and materially feel somewhere under the roof.
If you feel thát, you live somewhere; if you do not feel thát, you're not living.
So most people do not live, even though they have a house.
The challenge is to make the environment so that people can be happy there in their full complexity, in so far as a man can be happy.
That might be very iffy but you can maybe do something to contribute to this.

Mathilde Fischer is Director of FISALAB. She was trained as an architect/building engineer at TUDelft and received her degree in architecture in 1992. Her post graduate studies include a Zaha Hadid masterclass at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam in 1993.
Mathilde Fischer was a visiting lecturer at the Technical University in Delft (TUDelft) in architectonic and urban design from 1996 to 2012. She is doing research into the importance of utopian urban design in the past for urban design in the present: “Learning from Utopia.” Most of her attention, however, is directed to her projects at FISALAB.

FISALAB values the spirit of collaborations with long term associates such as photographer Errol Sawyer, from New York, and many other artists, architects, townplanners, landscape architects, engineers, philosophers, historians, geographers, advisers and last but not least craftsmen. We invite everybody who shares our vision to contribute to our projects in reference to Oscar Wilde’s citation:

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at,
for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail.
Progress is the realization of Utopias.

FISALAB’s portfolio contains projects that vary in character and size. We design housing, public buildings and interiors and we renovate houses in the 17^th Century Amsterdam Canal Ring, listed as Unesco World Heritage. We also design townplanning and landscape architecture and we create exhibitions, books, give workshops, lectures and provide advise as consultants.

1. Citation from "Cultural Values,” Lectures at TUDelft, 1981-1983, by Joop Hardy. Editors: Eric Joustra and Dolf Steenkist. Publisher: Kaal Book BV, Amsterdam, 1987. Page 12. ISBN 90-9001608-2.